I witnessed something that I never thought I would see in a developed country.
Let me provide you with a background story, especially for those living outside Singapore. The Singapore roads and highways are equipped with these toll gantries called ERP. They are basically an automatic toll booth. You drive past it, and it will automatically deduct a certain amount from a cash card in your car. These ERP gantries were implemented to reduce congestions in the central business district and the downtown area, so that people will take public transport instead of driving their cars. The smart thing the government did was, they positioned the ERP gantries in such a way that there is no way of escaping it. For example, I drove to Orchard Road on Monday to attend my class there. I passed through THREE gantries and was charged $4. Feeling annoyed, I tried to devise other alternative routes to avoid that high a toll charge, but I realised that there are none. You have to give it to the government here, imagine how many cars pass one gantry during rush hours. All that money……
Anyway, back to what I saw last night. I had to pass 1 gantry on the highway on my way home. It was about 8pm, and as I was about 30-50m away from said gantry, when the traffic became unusually congested. I saw motorcycles parked on the road shoulder, even a couple of cars too, so I thought there must have been an accident. Being a busybody that I am, I slowed down too and tried to find out where and how bad the accident was. Then I saw the ERP gantry, and the time displayed was 7:59pm. My assistant manager, who was in my car, put two and two together. All these road users were waiting around until 8pm, when the ERP would be turned off. So they purposely slowed down, parked their vehicles on the shoulders, and watched for the clock to turn 8:00. Sure enough, the moment it hit 8pm, the ERP was switched off and traffic was back to normal.
I am quite amazed to find such a practice here. I would think that this is something Indonesian road users would do, since they are already such rebels on the road. Would I pass the gantry at 7:59? To tell you the truth, I probably wouldn’t even notice it was a minute away from the end of ERP.
I wonder now if this has been going on since ERP was first started in Singapore, or if this is a new practice of saving money now that everything is expensive.
