Sigh, I really cannot take it anymore. Every day on Reddit, Facebook, TikTok, sure see people kpkb (complain) about PMDs (Personal Mobility Devices). “Wah, PMD rider zoom past me at 40km/h!”, “Wah, food delivery rider almost hit my grandmother!” Ok, fair enough, those errant riders really quite jialat. But hello, please look at the root cause can or not? You think people want to ride PMDs under the hot sun, risking fine by LTA, risking battery explode and burn down the HDB block, meh?
No choice, mate! Why? Because COE (Certificate of Entitlement) prices are absolute madness now!
The government keep saying COE must be expensive to control car population and prevent traffic jams. Ok, fine, logic makes sense on paper. But now Category A and B easily touch six figures. One piece of paper cost more than a 3-room BTO downpayment. Unless your father is a minister or you selling insurance/property and flexing on Instagram, who can afford? Ordinary Singaporeans also need to go work, take care of family, and buy groceries what.
So what’s the alternative? Public transport? Bro, peak hour MRT is basically a daily wrestling match. You get compressed until your internal organs change position. Then transit bus take forever because of traffic jams anyway.
That’s why everybody rush to buy PMDs and e-bikes. It’s the only way to survive! It’s cheap, point-to-point, no need to squeeze with 500 people, and no need to pay LTA $100,000 just for the right to buy a car.
But look at what happened. To solve the car problem, we created a giant monster on the footpaths. Now walking on the pavement is like playing a real-life game of Frogger. You have to check blind spots, look left, look right, listen for the “beep beep” or some high-volume techno music blasting from a modified PMA. Then LTA start banning them from footpaths, pushing them to grass paths, then to roads. The rules change faster than weather!
The irony is damn real. COE is supposed to make our transportation system a world-class utopia, but instead, it pushed everyone onto modified PMDs, causing chaos on the walkways, fights at the void deck charging points, and food delivery riders flying across crossjunctions like they are in Fast and Furious: Yishun Drift.
Don’t blame the people for choosing PMDs. Blame the fact that the price of owning four wheels in Singapore has become a literal luxury dream! End of rant. Now let me go outside and dodge three e-bikes while buying my caifan.