Samy Vellu said he'll be in politics for 10 more years in the news tonight. This prompts me to write about our transportation system since Samy reminds me of highways, roads, tolls and our public transport.
Jam is expected as part of our daily life now. A car pool campaign not long ago has failed. Among the reason probably finding the match of people from a certain area to go to the same office area, and you can't expect everyone going back at the same time with different job responsibilities. And what if someone from the group wants to do some grocery shopping after work and some don't. The hyper markets are not allowed to open for 24 hours no matter how convenient that can be for the public. I thought customer is king and businesses are supposed to address customer's needs but probably not in Malaysia. But I've digress. So there is no choice other than to have your own transport.
The call to use public transport also failed due to obvious reason of unreliability. The lack of integration among the many public transports has been a pain to many but since the ministers don't use them, people just have to bear with it. Just look at the commitment to build more roads and the commitment to improve our public transport. If the millions put on new roads and highways are put to improve our public transportation instead, we'll probably have a first class public transportation system by now.
And then we have our joy and pride, our very much protected national car that will churn out more and more cars on the road. The hire purchase interest rate to own your very own 4 wheels is quite affordable to many. Probably one day our road will become like a slow train of cars moving at 20 kmph because there are so many cars there will not be any room to move faster than that. But then again, maybe not. The price of petroleum is going up and it'll continue to go up since we still have the lowest petroleum price in the region. Isn't that the reason given to us every time there is a price increase?
All this makes me realized one thing; I don't know the long term plan of the country's transportation system. Is there any? What is the mission statement and goals of Samy's ministry? Or will it just be reactive approaches as it has always seemed to me.
Sunflower gives the connotation of cheerfulness, bright, jolly, merry... you get the idea! However, if any content in this blog didn't fit the cheerfulness implied by its name, look at it this way... I'm putting down all the wretchedness, gloom, melancholy feeling in here so I can continue living up to the expectation of making the association to the sunflower.
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