A MONORAIL zips in and out of the glass skyscrapers of the New Downtown as it ferries people around the bustling Marina Bay and the integrated resort.
At the same time, elevated covered walkways let office workers stride with ease from one building to another.
This vision of MP Ong Kian Min is the kind of quantum leap in policy-making he wishes transport planners had made for Marina Bay.
To underline his point, he cited the new Paris downtown, La Defense. There, vehicle traffic is separated from pedestrian traffic.
"It's basically like Raffles Place, but maybe five to 10 times bigger in size. The surface is pedestrianised. The roads are all underground. All buildings are connected," says the vice-chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Transport.
Mr Ong is not optimistic that a similarly bold vision will emerge here soon.
Not as long as the planners are setting their sights just on widening roads, controlling traffic lights and tweaking the Electronic Road Pricing system and the Certificate of Entitlement scheme, he says during an interview with The Straits Times at the office of his law firm in Raffles Place overlooking the Bay.
"My personal grouse about land transport policy is that the Ministry of Transport is very narrowly focused and its mandate is quite narrow.
"It can have authority only over that narrow strip which we call the road and the MRT."
To present a transport system of the future, it needs to collaborate with other government agencies, says Mr Ong.
On its own, the ministry does not have enough tools to do it, he adds.
Take Marina Bay. "If you ask the Land Transport Authority and the Ministry of Transport, it's still roads, five-lane highway, very standard layout," he says.
"If they can work more closely with the Urban Redevelopment Authority, specify what the building owners are required to do, then they can build linkages, elevated walkways, even a monorail system."
