Any transportation or town planning engineer or professional who has
studied town planning will be able to tell you the objective and
purpose of road system in town planning.
In order to have an efficient road system, roads are usually planned in three tiers namely,
1st tier - Expressways or Trunk Roads (connecting city to city, town to
town) where traffic should be of certain speed and generally fast
moving to lessen the journey time between remote places for works and
other economic activities,
2nd tier - Major roads connecting major towns and other networks within
the same city, where traffic needs not be fast moving and certain
slowness is tolerated.
3rd tier - Local Access Roads for residences or access to municipal
districts and suburbs. where traffic jams may occur as part of life
depending on how wide is the road or the density of the local
population.
Must the town planners be so paranoid as to design every tiers or roads
whether expressways or major roads or access roads to be moving at a
minimum speed of 30 km failing which $2 will be fined from the gantry
set up all along the way home.
If there are complete jams to cities or industrial estates where
hundreds of thousand are working at 8.00 am sure by all means clear the
traffic jams so that citizens will reach the office or work place on
time.
After all there are taxis, buses, MRTs so anyone who want to avoid jams can seek a more suitable mode of travel.
It is crazy our LTA engineers cannot distinguish between these three
tiers and insist on charging ERP fees for all three to the extent that
traffic returning homes must be sped up to reach home fast otherwise
they will be fined $2 for reaching home late.
LTA should wake up to the different purposes served by different types
of roads and not treat all of them on par with the cities, townships
and major business districts and as soon as there is any jam (or
slowing down) even on the way home all must pay gantry fees.
Why must anyone want want to race home after work? So what if some
people are not happy? We don't penalize the majority for the short
temper of a few do we?
Let there be life and leisure and not use the ERP to put everyone on edge.
It is preposterous to impose ERP fees on everyone on saturday for going shopping or seeing a show.
It is crazy to try to show off to the world we have the most successful
traffic at night or on saturday just to prove something like their
world class talents in solving every problems.
Can't our leaders leave well alone start to let people live their life
instead of tinkering with every slightest problems to prove their worth.