Expand sea links to ease Causeway woes

Both the Causeway and the Second Link are congested with vehicles on weekends, eve of public holidays and public holidays. Many Singaporeans like to drive into Malaysia for short getaways, and the number seems to be growing, given the strong bilateral ties. The trend may escalate when Iskandar Malaysia is fully developed in a few years’ time.

I was happy that a third road link, to enhance connectivity and create stronger links, was mooted during the recent Malaysia-Singapore leaders’ retreat. More importantly, I expect it to further spur Iskandar’s economic growth. The long hours spent waiting to clear the checkpoints speak volumes about the current bottleneck, which causes inconvenience and economic losses. A third road link and the high-speed-rail link should go a long way to ameliorate this.

While waiting for the two proposals to materialise, though, why not expand sea links and ferries as a mode of transport to ease the land traffic woes?

There are now ferries and bumboats that take passengers from Changi, Tanah Merah and HarbourFront to Johor. We should have more departure points by opening jetties and checkpoints at Raffles Marina, Sarimbun, Woodlands Waterfront, Seletar and Punggol-Serangoon.

Such terminals could attract bumboat and ferry operators to ply between Singapore and Johor as well as further north to Malacca and Klang. This could ease the burden on coaches and public buses competing for limited space with lorries and private cars on the two border crossings, and also entice those who drive to Malaysia (and vice versa) to switch to ferries.

We should be like Hong Kong; it is well linked to Macau and many cities in the Pearl River Delta region via high-speed ferries.