LTA and Vogon-ish Road Building

Aite, the govt wants to build more and bigger roads to meet the demands of motorists and relieve jams. That’s great, depending on where the roads are being built and at what cost.

First they tore down an icon of Spore’s post-65 history, the red-brick National Library at Stamford Road to build the Fort Canning tunnel short cut. Former NMP Siew Kum Hong said poignantly, that the short cut saved motorists 5 minutes, although “for the record, I’d give up those 5 minutes and take the National Library any day.”

Then they wanted to to evict the dead at Bt Brown, about 5,000 graves or 5% of the total dead population, to make way for a 2km 4-lane short cut. Who gives a frak about the dead? Nobody cared about it before until there were plans to redevelopment the GCB-potential land. True. Face it, Sporeans couldn’t tell Bt Brown from Mr Brown or from Bt Chandu. Something like the kid who didn’t want to play with his toy until his parent wants to throw it away then BWAWHHHHHH cry. Still, since there is loud and passionate reasoned feedback that the dead should be left alone for posterity and history, please listen. WTF, anyway, didn’t anybody watch 1982’s Poltergeist about building on grave sites?

Now, undeterred with evicting the dead, the govt is going to evict the living next. Rochor Centre is kaput next in the North-South Expressway grand plan. Frak, LTA are the gawddamn Vogons! In that latest road building, 500 families, 567 flats and 187 shophouses would be affected at least. Those affected better grab a towel each. Of course compensation and the usual would follow. Whether compensation is enough is always subjective.  For those affected, it is SOP to argue that it is never enough. The compensation is out of my tax-payer dollars though. Heh.

Regarding compensation and sweetening the bitterness of being kicked out of your home or business.  Let’s put it in context. The Land Acquisition Act was revised in 2007 and those private landlords bulldozed away have a better compensation than before. They are no longer shoved and insulted with a compensation pegged at 1995 rates, but at current market rates.  This change was a result of a 2005 sit-down stay-in when compensation was unreasonable over the Circle Line acquisition. So it isn’t that bad if you sit on private real estate now. Not so good however if you live in a HDB or have a HDB shop house as you are not a private owner.

Actually, shhhh, I’m still sympathetic, albeit selfishly less sympathetic towards the eviction of the families and businesses at Rochor Centre compared to LTA’s land acquisition that steals from our history. (That’s not a politically correct comment though.) Until SLA wants to evict me from my home to build a highway.