Our Desk: Transport Madness

Brook Yang

When the Public Security Police’s whistles shrieked at the flustered streams of pedestrians in San Ma Lo, the dreadful story of four migrants’ deaths seemed to have been submerged in the anxious air. Unsurprisingly, the city remained its usual hustling and bustling self, especially on a weekend with the Grand Prix, Food Festival and City Fringe Festival all taking place.
For most residents and commuters, especially those relying on public bus services and walking paths for their daily journeys, the annual Grand Prix week equals a week of traffic chaos and the disappearance of many daily buses.
At the Praça de Ferreira do Amaral bus hub, one could hardly avoid a taste of desperation when seeing one fully packed bus after another pass by without opening its doors. Like canned sardines, the waiting crowds surging in waves, the Square seemed to turn into an isle of expectation.
“The Grand Prix needs residents’ understanding and cooperation,” authorities stated. But year after year, the transport chaos that regularly occurs during special events and holidays hasn’t shown any improvement, whereas the massive influx of visitors flooding through the central district and city border gates has only increased.
When the chaos ended at the dawn of a new week, residents could take solace in the hope that the city’s transportation system would return from the transport madness, and the government would go back to its calm and composed pace of public infrastructure construction.
Yet the transport madness didn’t vanish. Instead it’s merely been diluted into every part of our day-to-day lives, resulting in a cyclical mindset veering between eagerly looking forward to a mass transport system and waiting in numbness for its completion.
According to the opinions delivered to the Chief Executive’s Office, the public has sent a pressing message that the top priority for the government’s administration should be fixing the city’s broken transport.
An engineer working on the construction of the Light Railway Transit once complained to the media that the large delay to the projects was mainly due to a lack of experience of the regulatory authorities who “didn’t know, yet didn’t listen.” “We’ve built up the big casino resorts, but just can’t move forward on the LRT,” he concluded, frustration showing in his voice.
Meanwhile, a low budget execution rate continues to recur each year, where one cannot judge if the government’s “well-known” low efficiency is derived from intractable difficulties, poor communication, weak artifice, inertia of procrastination, or simply an indifference to the people who live and work here.
In fact, the entire city has become an isle of suspense, waiting to see if anything labeled as a public service can and will go wrong. From television broadcasting to a telecommunications monopoly, poor design of public housing units, bankruptcy of bus and taxi operators… One by one, each has added its own bizarre story to this queer magnetic field.
While those in power are reveling in amazing tourist volumes, focusing on how new casino resorts can attract endless visitors; residents are complaining about the nuisance caused by migrant workers who rush into the buses heading towards construction sites.
Is the madness curable? Can the new administrative team make a difference? As far as we’ve learnt, resources won’t be a problem, whereas incapability, omission, or lack of respect for the people could be. On the contrary, only with daring, resolution and some wisdom will the government earn back our hope and trust.