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This video is really interesting. How A Single Car Causes A Phantom Traffic Jam Interesting videos. Sure got people knows about it.. but just like to share http://9gag.com/tv/p/a1qGED/traffic-jam-without-bottleneck-experimental-evidence

Radical solutions can and have solved problems even the experts fail to resolve. For example: if you have only a tiny 'fun' dog the size of a kitten, how do you make it work for you stop burglers breaking into your house? Tiny dog against 200 pounder burgler, or even a noraml 70kg desparate drug addict trying to steal our money while you are sleeping? Impossible?? No, it's highly possible AND effective!! ............ you only need two things to turn this tiny dog into burgler-stopper, no need to swap it with a huge watchdog... you need: #1 an burgler alarm button where the tiny dog can reach easily (go NTUC hyper mart to get one, cheap), #2 the dog must not fall asleep (easy, they dont) Train the tiny dog to press the button whenever he sees stranger at night (most dog, 99% can be easily trained to do it) Ok, back to the topic. One radical solution I can think of also has the side benefit of reducing air pollution. Why do people need cars? Ans: to get from A to B (work, shop, leisure, see friends, etc). In tiny singapore, these journeys usually last not more than 10 to 40 mins and therefore it doesnt matter if you travel in a big (ie E or S- class merc) or small (1000cc or below) car. The comfort or lack of it on this relatively short trips is not going to be a big issue. So, let's make it a default mode of travel within Spore by, wait for it..... using a car-shareing system where the user can pre-book the use of such a small car and pay for the use based of length of use and whether it's peak or non-peak hours. A car-sharing system allows the costs of car ownership / maintenance etc to be shared amongst the users. This is more economical as compared of owning / maintaining one's own private car. After all, why pay for full costs of ownership if he only uses his car less than half the time?? The car-sharing system can have its fleet consists of mainly 1000cc cars (good enough for most users) and some larger models. It can have these cars parked at strategic locations for users to pick up and return. There are electronic systems available for booking, payments etc etc. In fact there are already a few such systems in Spore market, only thing is that they are not large scale. If somehow LTA can make it attractive thru its rules for the people to use such a system, plus making great improvements in MRT / Buses, we can see traffic congestions reduced in a big way. Why? for daily trips to work, more people will take MRT / buses, those who insist on driving, can use the car-share system and pay for it. But when he reaches his office and park the shared-car, the car can be reused by another user who will pay for the use. During the day. This way, we wont see car parks in office areas full of idle cars between 9am-6pm, the cars are being used by others who need them during office hours. Same for weekends and public holidays, the same fleet of shared-cars will be booked and used by families who need them for say between 1 to 8 hours whatever it is. The key advantages are: (a) Shared cost, (b) Cars are fully utalised instead of parked idling. Due to fleet ownership, the companies who operates these cars have the economy of scale to keep maintenance low. The roadtax / insurance costs are shared by many 'users' through rentals. So with the above system, we have low cost use of cars and if these cars are hybric or electric, our envirnment will be cleaner than it is now. You may ask: if I dont like the cars such a system offers, can I have my model of choice? Yes, you will have to buy and maintain one as per current situation, but LTA may up the COE / rdtax / ERP for such private car and use the money collected to off-set the costs of keeping such car-shared systems. ie you pay for the option of having the model you like. On the average, four 1000cc cars use the same road space of three full size cars, or even less. This certainly will help ease traffic congestions. For those who die die must have either big or high power cars, as explain above, they can have it but pay a high price. Yes, it's a socialists' concept, but due to our small land size and high population density, it seems to be a viable solution. The details can be worked out especially with electronic smart systems available in the global market. BTW, LTA can also rent out high power / big cars on requests, at a higher price as mentioned. I wont mind splurging and rent one once in a while. This way, i can still get to enjoy such cars (say on weekends, or once in a while) without having to buy and maintain one in full. I can even try out different models for each weekends. Overall, we can have a choice of MRT / buses or rent/share a car. It's more cost effective and we can have less traffic congestions and a cleaner environment.

Read this in TKL's website: Traffic Congestion I visited a patient at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital in Yishun. After the visit, I had to drive to my office in Sin Ming. I was caught in bad traffic congestion along Lentor Avenue and Sembawang Road. The traffic was crawling. A journey of 10 minutes took more than 40 minutes. I do not know the cause of the congestion but the typical excuse is a traffic accident. I have seen a few bad traffic congestion due to an accident where nobody was injured, but the drivers of the two vehicles involved in the accident was arguing over the accident, disregarding the congestion that is being caused. If they are sensible, they should remove their vehicles from the road and argue elsewhere. The fault could also be blamed on the lack of traffic policemen. If there is traffic congestion, I would expect the traffic policemen to be on the scene, trying to clear the congestion. It seemed that there is a lack of traffic policemen on the road. So, the congestion can take a long time to clear. Another cause is road works. There does not seem to be control over the timing of the road repairs. I have seen the repairs done during the peak hours of the morning. It would have been better, if the minor repairs are scheduled during the off-peak hours. But somebody must pay attention, rather than leave the matters to be out of control. The traffic congestions seemed to be quite bad in many roads in Singapore and during most times of the day. This adds to waste of time and low productivity. Singapore used to pride itself on its ability to get traffic moving smoothly, which improves national productivity. In fact, the high fees paid for COEs and ERP are intended to achieve this goal. It now seemed that we are paying the high cost and still suffer from the slow, crawling traffic. If we are going to get bad traffic, at least we should not be paying the exorbitant cost! We are getting the worst of both worlds! Tan Kin Lian Maybe some will say 'another gahmen bashing' post, but there's truth in this