Sextet of Torment

There’s an absolutely horrid gauntlet of traffic lights I have to get through every morning at 7:00 AM, and it’s the series of traffic junctures from the infant care center I drop Hannah off at and then Ling.

They’re marked on the Google map below A to F. What really bites is that the route really is a very short 1.5 km only, but there are not one or two, but six traffic lights to get through.

A – Right after driving out from the car park, there’s a traffic light for students getting to the school just opposite.

B – Major cross-road juncture at the road; two turning lanes but of which only one is really usable (the other one is often used by slow U-turning vehicles)

C and D – Two killer junctures just 70 meters apart, with lights that change too quickly to expedite traffic getting onto Tampines Expressway.

E – Another mind-numbingly slow juncture for vehicles at the intersecting Punggol Road (filled with vehicles getting onto the Expressway) and Rivervale Street

F – The sixth traffic light for vehicles trying to turn into the small side road.

It must be some kind of national obsession with traffic lights, made the worse in morning traffic. What’s supposed to be a 1 minute drive takes as much as 15 minutes.

Ling alternates between chuckling at my exasperation and sighing (“Darling, try not to begin each day with so much negativity (at the traffic) OK?”) each morning. To the effect that she’s volunteered to drive that 1.5 KM short stretch from the infant care before my blood pressure shoots irrevocably through the roof!