I am very pissed with the LTA's move to reduce car growth to 0% with effect from next year! Have they ever thought of why are people buying cars? They should stop the growth of commercial vehicles as they are occupying too much road space!

People are buying cars because the LTA refused to boost the efficiency of public transport, instead they chose to waste money and resources on operating redundant bus services whereby the resource and money can be used to invest in useful and good bus services and rail network.

If they think that cars are causing jams, then what about heavy vehicles? Firstly, let me give some examples, I live in Bukit Panjang and I can tell you that many bus services here or in the west are really redundant:

1. Service 77: There is another bus service, 106, that also serves both the Bukit Batok and Marina Centre areas, so why is there a need for its continual existence? By the way, its route can already be served by four others, namely, 61, 106, 173 and 852!

2. Service 190: This used to be an all time favourite service plying the Choa Chu Kang, Bukit Panjang and Orchard/ Chinatown areas but not anymore ever since the implementation of the downtown line; to make matters worse, this service typically deploys 60 buses, and bunching of up to 6 such buses especially during peak hours becomes a common sight which often leads to massive jams because this service uses double-deckers and bendy models! This service must be withdrawn as it is no longer useful; obviously Bukit Panjang residents are better off taking the downtown line and service 972!

3. Service 700: This service duplicates the downtown line, services 960 and 972! Passengers going to Newton, Orchard and Shenton Way are better off hopping on the downtown line than riding on this service! I work at Shenton Way and when I don't drive, I take the downtown line to Bugis and make a transfer to Tanjong Pagar-mind you, its way much faster as I only take 45 minutes to reach the office; should I have chosen to board either service 700 or 971E, it's going to take me at least an hour to possibly even 1 hour and 15 minutes!

I therefore urge the LTA to work closely with their sub-contractors such as the 4 public transport operators and do a thorough review on their bus routes to eliminate gross redundancies, invest in other routes providing better coverage and they will still have surpluses to spend on the necessary maintenance of our train networks. Stop wasting our money blindly!

Presently not only commuters are suffering. We car owners, or should I say those who genuinely need a vehicle to get around are suffering because of the government's foolishness and stupidity in policy-making. If they think that by stopping the growth of private cars and motorbikes altogether the scarcity of land and road congestion issues can thus be tackled adequately, they are god damn wrong! By reducing private car growth rates to 0%, I can tell you right now, our country's economy will certainly take a significant hit as car dealers will suffer from huge business losses.

I hope to garner more feedback from audiences and if possible, do up a petition to make sure our government sit down and do some proper soul searching before simply dashing off to come up with anymore exasperatingly naive ideas.

Ann