Just got back from a business trip in Singapore. It’s been like almost 2 years since I set my foot on the island, and as usual, I cannot but start comparing my observations between Singapore and KL. This post might spark some discomfort especially after the recent cross-border “marginalised” debate. This is not the first time I travel to the Lion City, but this is the first written account of my observation there.

One of the most jarring difference is how efficient the public transportation is. You all can start arguing that the 697.2 square km island would be much easier to develop, but I believe that the design did not happen by accident. When you build something that will cost a lot of taxpayers’ money, you make sure you build it right the first time. This is very true with the MRT network. I don’t know how the tendering process works and if there’s any hanky panky going on behind the scenes, but as a commuter, I am just concerned that I pay a fair fare and I get to go from point A to point B efficiently.

Contrast that with the Rapid KL system. You have 3 different light rail operators and they hardly provide smooth interchanges amongst themselves. We are not even asking them to synchronise their schedules so that it doesn’t take more than 5 minutes for a passenger to disembark from one track to another. In the Rapid KL system, it might well make it into the Malaysia Book of Records if you can do the interchange (Star to Putra) in Masjid Jamek in less than 5 minutes. You just can’t help but realize that the entire light rail system was not built with commuters (also known as the taxpayers) in mind.

The feeder/transit bus system also did not happen by accidental planning. In this case, frequency equals efficiency, and not once did I wait more than 15 minutes to get on a bus. In KL, not only do you have to deal with a wider frequency gap, you might also need to deal with “non-arrivals”. I was reading up a newly printed brochure from the info counter in Kelana Jaya LRT station where there’s an initiative to integrate the entire public transport system under the RapidKL network. Let’s just see how well this works out…

For the most part of my trip in Singapore, I had no need to travel with a taxi to get to my destination; the bus is too frequent for me to hail one. Whereas in Malaysia, I also had no need to hail a cabbie, since I hadn’t have many pleasant experience with local taxi-drivers. I am not trying to stereotype here, but good taxi drivers are like finding a RM 20 note on the sidewalk, yes, it’s that rare! I even heard that those running on metres admitted that they’ve somehow tweaked it for “extra mileage”.

So to summarize my observation on the public transport aspect, in Singapore you can travel efficiently without owning a car. In KL, you can only travel efficiently by owning a car, that also is subjected to various factors which I feel is too long a list to be shared here.

I shall get into my next observation on the difference of public security between the two cities.

Stay tune.

• No related posts.