Covered Walkways Encourage Walking To Stations In Singapore - please copy worldwide

Problem
I am about to go about but it's pouring with rain. If I'm feeling flush, I phone for a taxi. They are all busy. Uber provided a cheaper alternative. Now the private car alternatives to taxis have started pricing according to demand. Should I stay at home?

Answers
The nice thing about a good government is that it thinks ahead to what the citizens need and want and how they act and supplies their needs for the benefit of all. Sir Stamford Raffles famously built the 'five foot way', covered areas over pavements alongside the shop houses, as you can still see in parts of little India and Duxton Hill.

In those days many people walked or worked in the five foot way. Even today the shopkeepers put their trays of goods between the pillars and an old man with a sewing machine sets up shop out of the sun under the covered way.

Along came cars and careless city planners. Up go high rise buildings with no shelter for pedestrians, just cliffs of concrete and brick. In England Sough has roads like tunnels which pedestrians have no shelter from rain or sun, no ground floor shops, no refuge from heavy vehicles exhausts or splashing from big buses ploughing through dirty puddles splashing the payments (Americans say sidewalks).

However, the good news is that the planners in Singapore have considered how to get people out of cars and back into the new railway stations being built all over the city.

Last Spring 2017 I saw the covered way being built from the new Cashew station up the hill. A local resident told me it was to protect children from the local school walking to the station. Now I can see that the programme is extending to help adults and with a different purpose, not just to protect pedestrians from rain, but to change habits and to make walking to the station an easier option.

Reports say that the good results are:
1 More use of trains
2 Less use of cars - less pollution from road traffic, fewer traffic jams, faster road journeys for cars, and buses (and delivery vehicles and tourist buses)
3 Less use of buses means the same effect - plus fewer delays as people board and alight so quicker journey times.

I hope that the planners in Harrow will change their minds about are allowing giant towers of concrete alongside narrow pavements.

Disadvantages of Narrow Pavements
Cuts down the chance of expanding the road width later.
Claustrophobic
Exposes pedestrians to pollution
Pavements so narrow you cannot use a pram or bicycle without forcing pedestrians out into the road and preventing parents from holding the hands of children or the elderly.

Advantages of cover
Pleasanter to walk, run, or jog.
Shelter from both sun (exhaustion and melanoma cancer).
Shelter from and rain inconvenience and damage (wet clothes, dye running onto clothes and white paperwork, and wet shoes, soaked newspapers, and spoiled school books).
Shelter for sellers of food and drinks and protection from spoilage of food on sale and your snack pack lunch. (Shop signs in Takashimaya department store's basement food court deli stalls warned as yet uncooked and to be eaten raw fish and cooked fish (such as sushi) must reach home within an hour.)

Summary
Well done Singapore for the new (2017-8) covered ways.
England and other countries please copy.

Author, Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Reminders from Rome and Italy: Rome, Etruscans, Crime, Cutting, Pollution, Police, and Perugia in Umbria

Italy is one of the top ten countries visited by the British and holiday-makers worldwide. So the Italians have been busy promoting at the World Travel Market in London. Rome is pushing for more upmarket customers, especially visitors on conferences, to stay longer than the average two-day stay, because conference goers stay longer, five days average, and spend more.

More Police
Rome is planning to introduce special police to cut down on crime. That's important. For years I avoided Spain and Italy because of my experiences there.

Cutting Crime
Another initiative is to remove one cause of Crime, immigrants who have no jobs and turn to crime as they have no other income. The move is to get employment for immigrants instead of taking the opposite approach which is leaving them unemployed or cording them to give up work.

I have always thought that forcing people to be unemployed (in the UK) is daft. Either send them home or give them work.

Cutting Polution and Traffic James
A second initiative is to cut down coaches or buses polluting and creating traffic jams. The increased charges on buses and coaches entering the city did not please a spokesman for buses, who told me that in many parts of the UK and presumably also Italy as many as five times as many visitors arrive by bus or coach, as arrive by air.

Tourist Tax on Coaches
In response the representative of Rome told us that they were not intending to cut out bus and coach travel entirely, just to regulate it. The changes planned are not only with the tax increase from the current 9 euros on each bus entering the city going up to 25. (If I've got the figures right. If you know otherwise please tell me. I don't think the exact figures matter, just the fact that it's a big increase to deter the buses as well as making money for the city.)

Pedestrian
The other moves coming to Rome include more pedestrian-friendly areas.  How will the pedestrians get around from the coach parks? Some shuttle buses, electric or environmentally friendly, are also in the plans or pipelines.

Rome and Exciting Etruscans
Rome has Etruscan ruins. I'd never understood who the Etruscans were nor cared about them until I went to Perugia and saw the giant cliffside gateway which is the entrance to the city. Looks like tunnelling into the cliffside, but huge! The Etruscans are the natives who fought the encroaching Romans. Either the Roman were more ruthless or better organized or both. Anyway, modern Rome also has underground catacombs, like Paris, as well as Etruscan remains. More on the Etruscans in my next post.

Umbria and its Capital City Perugia
Just a reminder about Umbria and one of my favourite cities, Perugia. The links are
 @UmbriaTourism and #loveUmbria

More updates on Umbria shortly. See my previous posts on Perugia.

Etruscan gateway in Perugia. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Websites and links:
 @UmbriaTourism and #loveUmbria
See my other travel website:
www.luxurytravelforless.co.uk

Author
Angela Lansbury
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Safety on British Buses - What You Can Do and What They Can Do

Problems
What can a bus driver do to help passengers?

Answer
Many, if not all, public buses in London allow the driver to directly contact police for assistance.

Story
I sat next to a bus driver who was enjoying what you might call a busman's holiday. (A British born driver, with family in the Caribbean, but his ultimate holiday destination this year was Bali!)

He told me that on his bus he has continuous recording, which was able to exonerate him when a woman stepped off the pavement as his bus was drawing into a bus stop. She went flying, but luckily was not injured.

The recording device is in the bus at the insistence of the insurance company. Its purpose is to protect the insurance company agains claims made on behalf of other drivers, vehicles, buildings or streetware and pedestrians. He was traumatised by the accident and worried that it might be his fault. The recording supported the pedestrians own admission, that he had done nothing wrong.

Apparently, if there is an emergency, the driver is supposed to stay at the wheel of the vehicle. (I suppose he is in charge of moving it and ensuring it can be moved or stationery.) He has a direct line to the police with a red or blue alert. A blue alert is a full emergency, which brings the operator to answer immediately and send the police along immediately, if required, top speed, racing through traffic, with lights or sirens blaring to clear the road ahead of them.

The blue alert, I understand is if the police are required to attend, but not racing to the scene nor making this a priority over other possibly more serious events.

Well, that's nice to know. Help at hand, when needed. Bus driver with instant connection to the police.

Tips
When alone, try to stay downstairs in a bus near either the exit or in sight and hearing of the driver. Carry your identity and the number of anybody to be informed in an emergency.

Fun Facts
Stagecoach runs buses. But another 'Mega bus' company runs coaches.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer,author and speaker. More posts on other blogs on bloger.com, websites, and Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube. See books on Amazon.com and Lulu.com

Islington - for food and shopping

Islington is known as a fun and yuppie up and coming area for good reason. One stop from Kings Cross on the Northern line brings you to Angel station. Coming up the long escalator you see advertisements for a local bakery. Turn right out of the station towards Islington Green. Parallel to the main road is a narrow pedestrian street full of charming shops. Both outside in the busy road  or in the shelter of the pedestrian area I have never seen to many eating places ranging from coffee shops and chains to gourmet restaurants. Here are a few pictures of places I saw.

Photos by Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Copyright.