Budget Buses

 There was a time when there was an issue about transporting workers from South Asia or the proverbial “Darkies” who are exploiting Singapore by doing the jobs Singaporeans won’t do. A few “aged lefties” (In Singapore, they’re inevitably aged – the kids are too busy trying to be successful in cubicle land to care about the rest of the world), got upset that the construction companies were jamming the workers in backs of lorries that had no seat belts or any form of safety during accidents:

 

 

If I remember correctly, there were one or two traffic accidents and I believe one or two “Darkies” were killed. Singapore’s aged lefties were up in arms that human beings could be transported in such a fashion and wrote many social media post about this.

However, whilst there was a hue and cry about this and the government did make one or two noises about promising to look into things, nothing actually happened. Around two-years after the din of needing to treat dark skinned South Asians who do actual work, nothing was actually done. The reason was simple. The construction lobby made the point that it would be prohibitively expensive for them to actually provide things like buses to get their workers from point A to point B.

To be fair, to the government, only the aged lefties seemed upset by the issue and sine aged lefties aren’t inclined to vote for the government anyway, the government decided to do what it does best – pay attention to those who can be reminded to vote “properly.” As far as that segment of the population is concerned, the Darkies should just be grateful for whatever they’re getting and one shouldn’t force “prohibitively” expensive things onto the employers like wages, accommodation and let’s not forget the levy for foreign workers.

Then, as was once pointed out to me, Singaporeans used to ride around in a similar fashion and were perfectly happy with it. So, why should one impose “unfair” expenses on the construction industry (which is inevitably government funded) when everyone was perfectly happy with such methods of transportation.

I’ve come round to accepting that there may be a point here. Instead of calling for the ban on putting workers in lorries, we should expand this and create a new form of mass market transport.

Look, many us complain about how the bus and MRT services have become more expensive in recent years. I am guilty of this. I notice that a decade ago, it was possible to travel around for a week on $10. These days, $10 last you a day or so. What I can do about it? The answer is utterly jack all because mass market transport in Singapore is a duopoly run by the same people. They can charge whatever they want and the masses like myself can either learn to walk longer or die if we don’t want to pay the fares.

So, what’s to be done. Well, the answer is lies in the taxi market. At one stage, driving a metered cab was to exclusive purview of a few big companies. Then Uber came along made it such that anyone with a car could be a taxi driver. Uber was eventually booted out and replaced by Grab in Southeast Asia but the point remained – everyone with a car was suddenly giving rides. Metered taxis were forced to get creative because the ride hailing platforms were actually competing with them.

The same thing happened in the telco market. Along came Starhub and M1 and before you knew it, SingTel, the elephant of the market was forced to cut prices (especially on long distance calls) and look beyond Singapore for growth.

I am very sure that there are plenty of people yearning for an alternative to the bus and MRT. You just need to let entrepreneurs fill this niche. A guy with a lorry can become a bus operator of sorts. Just figure out a route and I’m sure enough people will be willing to cram onto a lorry to get from the housing estates and head to say the centre of town for half the cost of a standard bus ride.

I’ve sat in the back of lorries. Happens when I used to hitch a ride with the guys helping me move things. When I was married to Gina, we’d ride in the back of my then father-in-law’s lorry, which he would use for egg delivery. It was one of my few happy memories of that period.

So, let’s remember that we once used to move around the way foreign workers move around. Let’s see if we can return to that era and think of how happy our local population would be.