JYSim for jobless-yokel Sim

Dear Sir,

Bus Revamp on Penang Island
First of all let me congratulate the Penang Municipal Council and Penang State Government on the innitiative move to revamp the bus route system on Penang Island. Finally Penang will have a proper and well-organised bus transit system.
2. However, I wish to draw your attention to several drawbacks and flaws in the planning and implementing of this system. Firstly please note that Penang has still lots of illiterate old folks living in and around the heart of town. These people are not from well-to-do families and generally they don’t own cars. Naturally, they depend on public transport whenever they need to travel, be it to work, to go marketing or to pay their income tax in KOMTAR. Some rely on these buses for over 30 years and they can as well lament which bus is for which route by heart. A sudden change, announced and implemented in a time frame not more than a week, with bad publicity, naturally upsets the maps in these people. The fact that they’re illiterate adds to their frustration, not to mention a steep raise in bus fares.
3. Secondly, the fact that the new bus revamp is done within one week fascinates me. It proves that the government is now really ‘cepat’, but not neccessarily ‘tepat’ and ‘mesra’. Buses need to pass the puspakom test as a pre-requisite to run on the roads. However, how many buses have actually taken the test till now? How many others are on ‘provisional’ running and pending for further tests? Bus drivers, among others, live a hard life with long working hours. Giving them 5 days to get their vehicles pass a test may not sound like a burden to government officials who can still come out for hi-tea 4 times a week, but the 4-hours used for the test will be a great loss for drivers. The biggest flaw is not allowing enough time for these tests and still persevere in implementing the revamp on time. Ultimately it’s the people who suffers, not the top officials.
4. While some new routes are introduced in this revamp, people are not well informed. Instead, those old routes buses are re-routed, causing huge agony among USM students who now have only the 3-3 buses. Worse, ALL 3-3 buses are fully packed and looked more appaling than those ships used for transporting African slavesto America during the 18th century. We do not have to remind the government that there are a lot of students and residents living around the USM area. And unlike your children who have their own cars, these people rely very much on public transport. Failure in planning a good system will eventually agonise these students and you don’t want to see a Paris student demonstration happening here.
5. While our national carrier MAS needs 6 months to implement its route rationalisation plan, I’m of course amazed by how the Penang Government manage to do it in 6 days. 6 days to inform 1 million Penangnites, not through television, not through posters until the last 2 days, and not through postbox-to-postbox info or talks and kempen. Frankly, we would rather want PORR to be completed later than to get lost around the island and paying RM5 and waiting 4 hours for a sardine-packed bus.
6. Let us tell you what you can do in the meantime, tomorrow, wake up at 6.45, not a minute late, and take a bus to your office. I bet you’ll reach there only by 10 (not if you take a taxi or sapu-chiar (illegal taxi)), sweating profusely and cursing the driver for nearly scrape off your neck when cornering. You might as well bring an iPod and watch ‘I Not Stupid Too’ on the way. Be assured you’ll be able to finish the movie on the way.
7. I’m so glad I live in a family with 2 cars, or else the next time I have to go to KOMTAR to pay by IndahWater bills, I have to wake up at 5 am.

Thank you for reading this letter. May it be so inspiring you’ll look into your bus route revamp seriously.

Penangnite all my life,
JYSim

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 2:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.