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Saturday, December 15, 2007
holidays are zzzzzooooming by. real fast. its just less than 3 weeks left till school reopens. dang. i hate to remind myself. sorry folks for bringing up this dreaded reminder. Gotta get it off my chest. Haha.
Okay, let's turn our frustrations on the current "price hike frenzy". Taxi fares are the lastest to go up. You know one thing about these price hikes in singapore? They defy the law of physics. They have rewritten it, in actual fact. Read this:
What goes up NEVER comes down
Geez... sounds scary. The sky wont be the limit at this rate. Maybe outer space would. However, the taxi fare adjustments arent as SCARY as some put it to be. the meter will NOT jump by a dollar every few seconds, nor will your current fare from tampines to tanah merah double, or treble as some absurd nincompoops would say.
Read the table below and do your maths(click on the link). The result will show that new taxi fares will not differ substantially from the current pricing, that is for the off-peak hours only. During the peak hours, and coupled with the prospect of traffic jams during those times, i think the wise ones will stay away from cabs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_Singapore#Fares
Despite efforts by the authorities to make various parts of singapore more accesible via buses and mrts, this very fact will still remain. Taxis are indispensible. Think about it. With the imminent opening of the circle line, getting from tanah merah to sengkang by mrt will definitely take up less of your time as compared to the current EW-NEL line route. However, the hassle of buses and trains remains. You have got to make a total of 2 transfers, the first being at paya lebar mrt, and then at serangoon, in order to arrive at your destination. All the walking and waiting one has got to go through will be undoubtedly be frustrating, especially for those in a rush. But that will not be the end of your misery. If your ultimate destination is say, rivervale mall, woah, then you have got to consider more waiting, and walking, when you transfer to the LRT!!!
Boycott the taxis??? No way! Not even with the opening of the downtown line in 2018. Consider the amount of sweat and mental stress you gotta go through getting from one place to another on mrt and buses. This of course mainly applies to those "racing against the clock". Students like us, who have got all the time in the world wont mind the extra bit of walking and waiting (and maybe exploring) just to reach rivervale mall. (But why in the world would we want to go there anyway??? Even orchard's less of a hassle to get to). Moreover, its a flat fare of $0.40 we are talking about. Hopefully it stays this way. One thing i have gotta admit though, mrt has indeed made life much easier for students. Working adults? maybe. Rushing adults? errmmm, not so. Dont blame me for talking rich, but sometimes it makes more practical sense to hop onto a cab and sacrifice those pieces of paper residing in your wallet, just for that extra bit of comfort, convenience and yes, a peace of mind.
C'mon. Let's accept it. This is Singapore, a fine city of fine dining experiences, fine scenary, and of course fine prices. Without occasional hikes, where would all the "finess" go to. Of course i am one disgruntled singaporean whenever i hear of such price hikes. Haiz, but what to do? Singapore mah. Everyone need to tam jiat(earn a living). Taxi drivers need their ricebowls. Bakeries need theirs too. Office workers need theirs(of course from the bonuses when companies do well, and companies do well thanks to endless splurging by you-know-who). Its a cycle. And when everything goes up, we find that everything in Singapore evens out, and becomes more balanced. You pay more, I pay more, and in return we get paid more. I dont see much difference. Hopefully my foresight isnt wrong.
Entered by platinum at 2:26 PM
