Same Old Traffic-Stopping Story

Source : Weekend TODAY, August 25, 2007

SHOULD we be worried when we consult a doctor for a persistent cough and he keeps prescribing more of the same medicine?

If the medicine is not helping the cough, a wise doctor would probe further to find out what other factors might be causing the cough and prescribe a different treatment.

Following the same logic, has the Land Transport Authority (LTA) ever wondered why despite putting up more and more Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) gantries, the traffic congestion never seems to ease?

We now have 62 gantries on our small island, and you bet Singaporeans know better than to stop counting.

Whenever a gantry goes up, motorists using that particular stretch of road are likely to find an alternative route to their destination. And this leads to congestion elsewhere, on these alternative roads.

I know of many motorists who can’t stay on these alternatives — and usually longer travelling routes — for long, and they almost always end up inserting their cashcards reluctantly and using the same old roads again.

And so, the same old story repeats itself — the traffic piles up again, motorists continue paying for the use of equally congested roads while the ERP coffers continue to fill up.

Apart from being a fixture of any bustling city in a developed, affluent country, traffic congestion on our roads can be attributed to many other factors: Poor road design and a lack of foresight in constructing more roads to meet rising usage, overly easy credit for car ownership, poor public transport design coupled with unreliable travelling times and of course, citizens who simply can’t do without cars.

All are problems that have to be tackled with different approaches. The ERP cannot be a fix-all solution.

Each time the LTA announces hikes in ERP rates or more gantries, members of the public have called for more concrete statistics and studies to be presented to show that the ERP is indeed the right panacea for the persistent traffic problems.

However, such calls seem to have fallen on deaf ears.