Like many Singaporeans, I love my car. A car is also essential for my work as a doctor, as house call requests come in at all hours of the day.

However, I am cognisant of the hidden societal costs of driving private cars, in terms of noise and air pollution, space utilisation, traffic congestion and road accidents.

Parking charges, therefore, should reflect these costs, whether the car be a toy or essential tool of the trade ("Want to go car-lite? 'Slam brakes on cheap, easy parking'"; July 12).

Giving up our love for driving is, of course, predicated on a sound and reliable transport infrastructure.

Here, I disagree with Mr Lawrence Loh Kiah Muan, who suggests Singapore's transport infrastructural system is inefficient ("Go car-lite? Have proper infrastructure in place first"; last Thursday).

In 2014, Siemens commissioned a study of transportation networks in 35 major cities around the globe, and concluded that Singapore's was the best in the high-density compact centre group and worthy of emulation. We were lauded for our highly integrated governance, reliability, punctuality, long-term planning and ability to cope with long-term growth.

Other ranking studies have also come to similar conclusions.

It is true that, sometimes, things do not appear rosy and perfect on the ground, especially when our desired smooth passage from point A to B gets thwarted by a lack of transport routes or breakdowns.

But we must remember that we are doing well.

Our policy solutions and infrastructural support are an endless work in progress, needing constant experimentation, innovation and incremental advancements to fine-tune.

This unyielding task takes great political will and transcendental forbearance on the part of all our citizens. Nothing worthwhile achieving ever did come easy.

Yik Keng Yeong (Dr)