$2200 for a bike is reasonable?

Not too long ago, there has been some controversy over the National Parks Board's (NParks) decision to purchase 26 bicycles - foldable ones that amount to $2200 each. What raised more eyebrows, especially the bike otakus, was the brand of the bicycles, Brompton.

Brompton is a London-based bicycle manufacturer and it is obvious that NParks was paying for the brand. However, there are still alternatives to Brompton like Dahon which hails from Taiwan and Taiwan bikes are actually pretty decent. A Dahon bicycle can cost less than half of what NParks had fork out.

The matter was further intensified when it was known that only one single bid, from bicycle shop BikeHop, was made for the tender. Netizens stated that BikeHop is not the authorized distributor of Brompton here. Instead, it is Diginexx but its marketing manager claimed that it was not aware of the statutory board's tender.

I am quite certain that the cycling circle in Singapore did not know about the tender's existence to a great extent. If majority of bicycle distributors were aware of it, there will no doubt be more than a solitary bid.

To me, the most shocking thing about this entire issue was NParks claiming that "we found the quoted price to be reasonable after comparing with market prices". This definitely sounds ridiculous as one who knows bikes knows that renowned brands like Dahon or Tern Link are cheaper alternatives.

This may be a sign that Singaporeans will have to purchase COE for their bicycles in the future too. Maybe ERP gantries will be set up at certain areas of public parks as well.