Thinking Right but Doing Wrong

Recently, Orchard Road is being made over by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB). It is obvious that Orchard Road facelift has two purposes, first is to make the road less crowded and make the pedestrians feel easier to wander around; the other one is to make the road more beautiful to attract more tourism. Understandably, Singapore needs more travelers to come over, especially at the time of economic depression, and to make the road over will provide the pedestrians with more convenience. However, to spend $40-million on several silent changes on Orchard Road ---- as 40% of the people polled on Orchard Road did not notice the changes, nor will they help the shoppers much, is absolutely disappointing.

As we can infer, if there are some small helpful changes to the public facilities that we use every day, they will be noticed quickly. According to the introduction of the STB, there are numerous changes on Orchard Road including new street lamps, co-ordinated street furniture, decorative glass panels and plotted flower totems. Nonetheless, a poll carried out by LifeStyle shows that nearly a half of the people have noticed the changes, and among the people who have noticed the changes, some of them either can only name one change or do not think they are useful. On the other hand, the STB haven’t made much effort on advertising the changes, and most people are not focusing on the decorations along the road, so it is reasonable for people to ignore those unimportant things.

People may think one of the main reasons that keeps the changes silent is the time taken since the facelift has started in April last year. However, a mere glance at what are changed shows a different picture. First, the trees on the both side of Orchard Road are very tall and big, they hide the nice designed street lamps into the crossing branches, and hence the pedestrians will not notice the changes deep in the trees though it is likely to be brighter at night. Moreover, widening the footpath undeniably helps to make the street less crowded, but another thing has put the situation even worse than before ---- the flower totems. When the travelers come, most of them may stop in front of the totems and have a look at it or take a picture. As most Singaporeans and tourists are well educated, they may not cross over when people are taking photos, and then they will chose to stop for a little while, or walk aside. This will result in getting crowded in the street, because people are at least walking in the past, and now they are lingering.

To sum up, it is indeed a good idea to improve the image of Orchard Road in such economic situation it is also farsighted to upgrade the facilities. However, they have used a wrong way to put things into practice and thus to spread $40-million on Orchard Road becomes a blunder.