When Public Transport Fails

I am a creature of routine and yesterday, my already so blue Monday morning was ruined by 2 things:

1) The stalling of a silly maintenance train between Pasir Ris to Tanah Merah. The stall lasted 7 hours (from 5 plus in the morning to 12 plus noon) and affected about 60,000 commuters.

2) The price of my cab fare to work as a result of the MRT delay

This is absurb and simply ridiculous! Even the cab fare from my house to Jurong East is at a maximum of $19! Gosh! My heart sank when I reluctantly pullled out $30 to pay the Taxi Driver after he had sent me from my house to my workplace at Tanjong Pagar.

Anyway, I knew about the MRT closure only when mum called. She sounded so frantic when she told me that MRT is closed, the shutters are down, people are crowded everywhere, things are chaotic as people are queuing to wait for the Bridging Buses blah blah.. My mind raced and the only transport I could think of to get to work is CAB. Mum repeatedly told me that I should take a bus from the interchange, but c'mon! I don't even know what bus goes to town!

In the midst of all the confusion and panic, I headed to the other side of the house (where the main road is) and started flagging for a cab. To my astonishment, there were already so many people standing along the road and looking out for cabs. I followed suit but all the cabs were already 'hired' and I waited and waitied for somewhat 20 mins before deciding to walk back to the small road that leads to my house. Along the way back, there were also a hand few of people standing by the road, looking out for cabs, including this old man standing on the road with clutches. I felt sorry for him because he looked helpless. I walked further down and prayed hard for a cab. Thank God a cab turned into the small road in time and I quickly flag for it. The cab did stop for me and I hopped on quickly. However, as the taxi drove past, I saw the old man on the road with clutches, still flagging a cab, I felt seriously guilty.

If I didn't walk down further, the cab would be his. Who knows how long he had to wait before a cab showed up :(

Anyhow, this whole episode of screw up just made me ponder of how much we rely on public transport. The government has already placed more ERP gantries in hope that it would relieve traffic congestion on the expressways and people would use the public transport instead. But how are drivers going to 'convert' to taking public transport if there are far too many hiccups and disruptions recently?

Sigh. I know my blood is boiling as I'm typing this, but I understand the cause of all these problems is because our population is increasing and Singapore is just so small.

So much for being a small red dot.

If yall want to see how bad things are even for public transport, trying working at City Hall, Raffles Place or Tanjong Pagar. People used to queue to get on the escalators because the stairs are just too many. Now, people are actually queuing to climb the stairs because the crowd is just too packed! Such a sight :(

Enough of blood boiling thoughts. The only happy thing that fills my mind is the booking out of my brother this Friday :)

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