The Star (Metro Northern Edition) today, waxed lyrical about the good old days in Georgetown, when the living was easy and public transport good, efficient and cheap.....
Having used the public transport system during much of the 60's and into the 70's, I could not agree more....Yep as a student living in the kampong bahru area, i could catch a bus for 5 cents to prangin road and then walk to all my favourite haunts...like capitol Cinema, Cathay, Rex or from Prangin, catch another bus to tanjong bungah for another 10 cents...u hardly wait for more than 15 minutes for a bus....yes as late as 1978 when i started work...i could still use the bus...this time i lived in island glades and have to catch the earliest bus down to the jetty for not more than 30 cents...and it was still quite good...
i left Penang in 1979 and never knew why and how the public system got so very bad.....The Star sadly and very cowardly did not probe for the reasons and causes for disintegration of the public transportation in penang...i smell rats here....too many skeletons to uncover maybe....
the result is the country as whole has to foot an increasing bill of subsidising fuel, health costs, infrastructure costs because the public transport was allowed to be sucked dry....
If we don't know the causes and reasons for the demise of the public transport system...we won't be able to come up with the cure....sadly, we continue to offer the same solutions that had not worked to the same problems which was not solved....someone's definition of insanity...doing the same thing but expecting a different outcome...
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