Samuel Ee Business Times 29 Feb 12;
SINGAPORE's road lane-kilometres increased 151 lane-km last year to 9,046 lane-km, or up 1.7 per cent from 8,895 lane-km as at end 2010, as total road length climbed 35 km or one per cent.
According to Land Transport Authority statistics, the increase was mainly due to handover of roads from other agencies and private developers to the authority.
'There was an increase from 2010 to 2011 as some new roads are now being maintained by LTA,' said an LTA spokeswoman. 'These roads were previously taken care of by agencies such as JTC, HDB or by private developers.'
She said that one example is the road network that JTC handed over from their new industrial park development in Tuas South in 2011.
Total road length is calculated by adding up expressways, arterial roads, collector roads and local access roads.
In 2011, it was mainly arterial roads and collector roads which contributed to the 1.7 per cent increase.
While the expansion last year may sound small, it was still significantly higher than in 2010, when total road length had risen 48 lane-km from 2009's 8,847 lane-km, or a mere 0.5 per cent (see table).
But the 2011 hike is likely to be a one-off increase although the LTA spokeswoman said it is difficult to forecast how many roads exactly will be handed over to the authority in future.
The climb in 2011's total road length comes at a time when vehicle population growth is set to be reduced further in a few months' time. From August 2012, the vehicle growth rate will be cut to 0.5 per cent from the current 1.5 per cent.
The 1.5 per cent rate itself was cut from 3 per cent three years ago after then transport minister Raymond Lim explained in his land transport review in January 2008 that the '3 per cent growth rate is not sustainable with a base of 850,000 vehicles, and with road growth at 0.5 per cent'.
Mr Lim said: 'While we will continue to build roads like the North-South Expressway (NSE), going ahead, the pace of road expansion will have to slow down, from one per cent a year over the last 15 years, to 0.5 per cent a year over the next 15 years.'
The vehicle population has shot up by more than 100,000 units since Mr Lim's remarks.
Based on LTA data, there were 956,704 vehicles plying Singapore roads at end-2011, up 1.15 per cent from end-2010's 945,829 vehicles.
Singapore is the second most densely populated country in the world and roads take up 12 per cent of our land area. Only Monaco is more densely populated, with 35,000 people living in less than two square kilometres.
For FY2011, the government set aside $1,615.99 million to extend the road network, down slightly from $1,629 million in FY2010.