Terror in the lift

Today, four in five Singaporeans live in HDB flats. Dwelling in a flat is second nature. But it wasn’t always this way.

Credit: Mailer_Diablo, CC BY-SA 3.0.

I found a newspaper interview from 1984 (the year I was born!) shedding light on how kampung dwellers had to learn how to live all over again, after they were resettled to high-rise flats:

Madam Oh Kim Toh used to fear the elevator.

She said in Fujian: “You stand in there, and the door closes. What if it never opens again? Or worse, the lift may jam halfway. I may suffocate.”

A little diversion: This article came out in the 1980s, during the madness that was the Speak Mandarin Campaign which swept through Singapore. The mainstream media dutifully marched in step with the Government, renaming anything that had a “dialect” origin - Nee Soon to Yishun, Peck San to Bishan, Au Kang to Hougang, and so on. Here, Hokkien - the name of the language - was renamed “Fujian”. Mercifully, the Government halted this by the latter half of the decade, but some of the changes - like the place names I mentioned above - have persisted. This is covered in my book Jalan Singapura.

The 51-year-old housewife is also unused to other things, such as the flush toilet, as she had been going to a wooden hut over the fish pond during her kampung days.

The rubbish chute in her Yishun Ring Road flat is almost a miracle to her.

“We used to keep the garbage in a bin and take it to the backyard for burning. Now my children tell me to just dump it into this chute!”

For one born into rural life, at Lorong Buangkok, and who had spent more than 30 years in a wooden house, moving to a high-rise flat was, in many ways, relearning how to live.

Madam Oh had to learn how to use a lift, the flush toilet and the rubbish chute.

“My three children taught me things like pressing the right buttons in a lift to get to the floors I want,” she said.

My supervisor, who is in his late 40s, also told me that when he first used a lift as a child, he burst into tears because he was afraid of the claustrophobic space!

Even with encouragement and help from her family, Madam Oh took several months to settle down.

“I could not sleep because the flat was very warm compared with the kampung house. I still miss the open space and cool breezes after seven years.”

But Madam Oh definitely does not miss the floods, which could rise to chest height, the mosquitoes and the inconvenience of having to draw water from a well.

“I’m free too. There are no more pigs and poultry to look after.”

Expenses, however, have increased since they now have to pay PUB bills and services and conservancy charges on their three-room flat.

“But I guess that is the price you pay for comfort,” she said.

And now it is the current generation who has no idea how living in a kampung is like.

The Caravanserai

I recently came across this intriguing creation, a necessary offspring of the age-old need for intercontinental, yet plodding, transport: The Caravanserai.

From Wikipedia:

A caravanserai or caravansary was a roadside inn where travellers (caravaners) could rest and recover from the day’s journey. Caravanserais supported the flow of commerce, information and people across the network of trade routes covering Asia, North Africa and Southeast Europe, most notably the Silk Road. Although many were located along rural roads in the countryside, urban versions of caravanserais were also historically common in cities throughout the Islamic world, though they were often called by other names such as khan, wikala, or funduq.

The word کاروانسرای kārvānsarāy is a Persian compound word combining kārvān “caravan” with sarāy “palace”, “building with enclosed courts”. Here “caravan” means a group of traders, pilgrims or other travellers, engaged in long-distance travel. The word is also rendered as caravansary, caravansaray, caravanseray, caravansara, and caravansarai. In scholarly sources, it is often used as an umbrella term for multiple related types of commercial buildings similar to inns or hostels, whereas the actual instances of such buildings had a variety of names depending on the region and the local language. However, the term was typically preferred for rural inns built along roads outside of city walls.

Caravanserais were a common feature not only along the Silk Road, but also along the Achaemenid Empire’s Royal Road, a 2,500-kilometre-long ancient highway that stretched from Sardis to Susa according to Herodotus: “Now the true account of the road in question is the following: Royal stations exist along its whole length, and excellent caravanserais; and throughout, it traverses an inhabited tract, and is free from danger.” Other significant urban caravanserais were built along the Grand Trunk Road in the Indian subcontinent, especially in the region of Mughal Delhi and Bengal Subah.

A 17th-century caravanserai in southern Iran. Credit: Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 4.0.

A 16th-century caravanserai in Cairo, Egypt. Credit: Sailko, CC BY 3.0.

In the first few years after the founding of modern Singapore in 1819, development was concentrated in the southern part of the island, where the port town was located at the mouth of the Singapore River. However, from the 1820s, trunk roads began to be laid down from the port to eventually all corners of the island, complementing the agricultural development of the island’s interior. My book Jalan Singapura details this.

Back then, transport was rudimentary - people travelled on foot, or using horses, bullocks, and associated carts and carriages. Cross-Island travel would have been slow, taking hours. I can imagine government or municipal officials, such as surveyors, taking a good part of a day to travel from the Town to a far-flung corner which would now be Jurong, Woodlands, or Changi, spending the night there, and then returning to “civilisation” the following day.

Which is where my interest in Caravanserai comes in. I wonder whether such facilities were built in the early days of modern Singapore, in the 1820s and 1830s, when cross-island transport was still in its early legs. Was there a market for such a business? Did the authorities run such facilities instead? How were these buildings like? Who patronised them?

And the challenge for me, the historian - if they had existed, how do I go about finding them?

I will take on this challenge.

The word serai is sometimes used with the implication of caravanserai. A number of place-names based on the word sarai have grown up: Mughal Serai, Sarai Alamgir and the Delhi Sarai Rohilla railway station for example, and a great many other places are also based on the original meaning of “palace”.

Of course, the Singapore place name “Geylang Serai” immediately comes to mind. However, this time, the “Serai” in “Geylang Serai” is Malay for lemongrass, which used to be grown in the area. I am not aware of any other place name in Singapore with “Serai” in it. That said, I am very happy to be proven wrong!

Transport plans

With the coronavirus pandemic reducing traffic on the roads and changing commuting patterns, certain under-used road lanes can be converted to cycling and bus lanes, said Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung yesterday.

There may also be scope to pedestrianise certain roads, said Mr Ong, as he set out his ministry’s plans following the President’s Address.

“The lower traffic and new travel patterns brought about by Covid-19 have opened a window of opportunity to re-imagine our road infrastructure,” he said as he sketched out the possibilities.

Other cities abroad, including Athens in Greece, have moved to reclaim road space for pedestrians and cyclists, as the pandemic alters commuting habits.

The minister also noted that Covid-19 has led to increased adoption of telecommuting and staggered working hours.

“This has led to more sustainable travel patterns. We will explore ways to make some of these changes permanent,” he added.

An empty Shenton Way during the Circuit Breaker. Credit: The Straits Times.

Sounds promising, and I’m pleased. After all, I’ve been calling for the conversion of road lanes into cycling and full-day bus lanes, and the pedestrianisation of entire neighbourhoods in the Central Area north and south of the Singapore River - suggestions sketched out in my book Jalan Singapura.

That said, Singapore has only emerged from the Circuit Breaker for three months, and many people are trying to resume their pre-pandemic routines, in order to claw back a semblance of normality. Some companies have reverted to getting their staff to come to the office for work. Within the first week of Singapore exiting the Circuit Breaker in early June, public transport ridership had doubled as compared to during the Circuit Breaker (even though the figure was still 36 per cent of pre-Circuit Breaker ridership). I’m sure ridership has risen even further from then until now. The same will apply to private transport and road usage. Will travel patterns eventually revert to pre-pandemic times, or will there be a new normal? Perhaps we’ll have a better idea in another three months or so.

Of course, the authorities could strike while the iron is hot, right now, when travel patterns have not fully reverted to pre-pandemic times, to make permanent adjustments to transport systems and roads. But I doubt this is possible, as such top-down changes involving ministries and statutory boards take time - lots of it.

The Government will also carry out its plan to expand the cycling path network from 460km now to 1,320km by 2030.

Mr Ong said these initiatives will help Singapore in its goal to become a car-lite nation, along with other measures such as a zero vehicle growth rate and phasing out private vehicles with internal combustion engines by 2040.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, going “car-lite” has to be executed with a significant whittling-down of the motor vehicular population in Singapore. Zero vehicle growth is good, but a reduction of the vehicle population will be far better.

He also outlined other plans for land transport as well as the aviation and maritime sectors.

For land transport, he said Singapore will continue to work towards the vision of a city where 90 per cent of peak-hour journeys can be completed within 45 minutes. Within towns, residents should be able to reach their nearest neighbourhood centre in 20 minutes.

These targets have been outlined before, and they remain lofty ones. The tough nut to crack is something that connects both targets - the feeder bus system, which serves all major HDB towns.

Tower Transit Bus Service 941, a feeder bus service for Bukit Batok town. Credit: Land Transport Guru.

I’ve taken feeder buses before, and they can be a royal pain during the peak period. Imagine living in a town such as Jurong, Yishun, or Tampines, and having to take a feeder bus to the MRT station, and then the train to an office in the Central Business District. Walking from home to the bus stop, waiting for the feeder bus, taking the journey on the bus to the nearest MRT station, walking from the bus stop or interchange to the MRT station, waiting for the train - all these take time, sometimes more than 20 minutes, and they’re only the first stage of the journey, the second stage being the train ride to the city. And if the target of reaching the neighbourhood centre in 20 minutes is not reached, then the target of completing a peak-hour journey in 45 minutes could be in jeopardy.

Complicating the feeder bus system problem is the fact that no two towns are exactly the same in terms of road system and population spread. Hence, optimising travelling times for feeder buses in one town requires solutions unique to that town.

Resources will continue to be invested in the public transport system to maintain reliability, he added, while new MRT stations and lines will be opened almost every year.

The Ministry of Transport (MOT) will also work with the Public Transport Council to improve public transport to help those with mobility challenges, said Mr Ong.

He added that expanding the public transport system to better serve Singaporeans requires major infrastructure and recurrent expenditure. “But this is essential public spending, which has to be carried out with financial prudence.”

Yes. A world-class public transport system for a world-class city-state is not a want, it’s a need.