About a mindless traffic jam, a thinking public servant, and some horse sense

Came home from work very very late tonight (actually past midnight, after an 11-hour stint) because of a bumper to bumper hour and a half long traffic jam, avoidable if clear and repeated public announcements had been made to tell motorists to avoid Bukit Timah Road after Sixth Avenue.

The cause was massive work spreading out from the centre line (but not affecting the Dunearn Road side) that took up eventually three lanes.

This kind of massive work must have had been scheduled and motorists could have been alerted early in the day to keep clear of that stretch on a Saturday night at around the witching hour when, apart from late night workers like me, motorists who had been on the night out were spilling onto Bukit Timah Road.

I'll like to sack all those people paid high salaries but who did have the so-called "helicopter vision" to foresee possible problems like this one. And the traffic cops who might have helped those stuck in the wrong (outermost) lane/lanes ease in ... were they anywhere around? Nope.

But I'd rather end this posting on an upbeat note. Kudos to Ms Lui Keet Quan from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority. The letter below, from a Mrs Koh Soek Ying, published in ST's Forum yesterday (1 July) tells it all:

"On June 15, after a last-minute scramble to book a short family holiday, I realised that my son’s passport had less than six months validity on it and we were leaving on June19. I made my way to the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) the next morning and was attended to by officer Lui Keet Quan, who informed me there was still time to get a new passport and proceeded to process my documents.

"Ms Lui also told me that my son, who has special needs, did not have to be present for the collection of the passport on June 18. I was absolutely impressed by the service rendered and even more so by the professionalism and initiative shown by Ms Lui. On June 18, again the service was spectacular. Total time taken from getting queue number to collection of son’s passport – under five minutes.”

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Postscript: The dark horse has finally spoken. He will not tikam-tikam his luck a third time. So it will be a three-horse race, assuming all three do get to the starting line come August.