While the Land Transport Authority (LTA) explores better ways of alleviating land transport pressures, why not look at this problem in a holistic manner?

I observe that land transport demand dwindles

1. during school holidays and;

2. whenever public holidays are close to weekends.

People take leave from work (and school) during the period. Let me humbly extend this reasoning to propose a solution to our land transport.

I disagree with the LTA's move to "encourage" (by pricing out) certain classes of citizens to travel during non-peak periods. But this idea could be extended into our working hours in the form of flexible working hours.

Working hours could be from, for example, 7am to 3.30pm to as late as 10.30am to 7pm. This automatically extends counter services like banking, after-sales services, etc, beyond the typical 9-5 period.

Firstly, it distributes land transport demand over a longer period of time. Secondly, it creates a city buzz by having service counters open from 7am to 7pm. Thirdly, it makes us truly cosmopolitan as our distributed working hours plug us into the global economy for a longer duration. Many of us work into odd hours of the night so as to connect with our global counterparts, anyway.

Besides working hours, the existing leave scheme could be upgraded with increased flexibility. Employees should be allowed to choose either March or September to reset their leave rather than compulsorily in December. This encourages distributed holidaying because not everybody has to clear leave by December.

The above-mentioned solutions may be too much for the LTA to carry out alone. Could other ministries help the LTA solve the peak-hour land transport demand?

Ng Swee Kai