Thursday, August 5, 2010

Car Park Woes link to Unsustainable Population Growth

Seems like all the suggestions given in feedback columns of various newspapers and online discussion are more effective than what HDB comes up with, which is to increase the night parking charges from $2 to $4 to solve the car park shortage problem. Increased of about $60 per month in the night parking will not deter drivers. Perhaps it only offers a 'favorable' opportunity for HDB to increase parking fee instead.

Besides COE, there are many others polices and measures in place to curb car population over the years. Looks like all these policies are not effective since the car population has continued to increase substantially. So what has gone wrong?

Shortage of parking space is interconnected to other issues which are surfacing – over crowed trains and buses, increase in housing cost, .....etc which are ultimately link to an unsustainable population growth.

Lack of foresight and inefficient planning, weak policies implementation and over reliance on reactive instead of preventive measures...are all accumulating and surfacing as problems one after another.

Our COE quota drastic reduction recently is clear indication of not acting early until the problem has escalated. Then fire fighting begins.

HDB has to link up with other government bodies for a long term solution to the car population woes. Don't just patch up hole when it appears. Temporary solution will only result in serious 'leakages' in the near future.

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