Sustainable transport 'needs new thinking'

Higher motoring costs, managing peak hour demand among ideas
Christopher Tan Straits Times 16 Apr 13;

A PAY-AS-YOU-DRIVE tax on motorists, flexible work times that get around public transport rush hours and encouragement for car-sharing, walking and cycling.

These were among ideas floated by four experts yesterday at a seminar on sustainable urban transport policies.

A major underlying theme of the debate, held at the National University of Singapore (NUS), was whether the country is devoting too much land and resources to transport.

Panellist Anthony Chin, a transport economist at NUS, questioned land use management as the Republic's economy switches from manufacturing to high-value activities such as research and development.

Roads take up about 12 per cent of Singapore's land area, with a similar amount taken up by housing.

"But if you include the airport and port, the percentage (for transport) is much higher," Prof Chin said.

"Do we need a physical port/airport to be a maritime/aviation cluster in the future?" he asked.

The two currently impinge on space available for other uses, he said, adding that in turn, that would drive up land prices and the cost of doing business and living in Singapore.

He said an area used up by a downtown port could instead be used for high-density mixed development.

Prof Chin also said Singapore should move away from building infrastructure to deal with transport needs at peak times - such as by encouraging working from home or flexible hours.

Professor Paul Barter of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy said some roads here are too wide and carparks too cheap.

While Singapore has a sound policy of restraining car ownership, he said, not enough is being done to make the city more liveable - the ultimate goal of any car-curbing policy.

In fact, quite the opposite has been happening with motorists enjoying relatively high speeds while pedestrians and places take a back seat.

"Traffic congestion gets more attention than it deserves," he said.

Prof Barter said redevelopment policies had stipulated that building owners in the city must provide adequate parking, and that these carparks are "subsidised" because space used for carparks was not factored in as part of the gross floor area calculated.

Professor A.P.G. Menon, a retired traffic planner who now teaches at the Nanyang Technological University, said: "We have provided enough for motorised traffic. It's time now to do more for non-motorised traffic."

He recalled a time when Singapore had bicycle lanes - for instance, along MacPherson Road in the 1960s - but they were converted to car lanes by the mid-1970s.

Prof Menon also pointed out that building more roads is not the answer, as new ones will quickly fill up. No city in the world has managed to build itself out of congestion, he added.

Prof Menon proposed instead the introduction of reversible traffic flow, in which more one-way lanes are provided to coincide with traffic flows in the morning and evening peak hours.

He also cited the high number of expressway incidents that hold up traffic. For instance, in July 2008, nearly 900 breakdowns were recorded on expressways.

Mr Adrien Moulin of the Belgium-based International Association of Public Transport spoke of cities "reclaiming" urban areas, such as Tokyo revitalising space around train stations by intensive redevelopment and Seoul tearing down a highway to restore a river.

Responding to a question from the floor on how Seoul's moves contrast with Singapore's plan to build a road through Bukit Brown cemetery, a site deemed by many to have natural and heritage value, Prof Barter said sacrifices would have to be made if a city wants to cater to driving.

He also felt that there could have been better public engagement ahead of the announcement.

"Government does not make enough effort in engaging," Prof Barter said. "There's a lot of secrecy in the Singapore Government.

"The cost-and-benefit assumptions were not made public... so people are naturally sceptical because they don't see the analysis."

'Pay as you drive' scheme suggested to ease Singapore's traffic congestion
Experts are suggesting that Singapore implements a 'pay as you drive' policy, which they say may be more effective in tackling traffic congestion.
Hetty Musfirah Abdul Khamid Channel NewsAsia 15 Apr 13;

SINGAPORE: Experts are suggesting that Singapore implements a 'pay as you drive' policy, which they say may be more effective in tackling traffic congestion.

They are also calling for current transport policies to gear towards greater sustainability and mobility.

These suggestions were floated at a seminar held at the National University of Singapore on Monday.

Owning a car in Singapore can be costly.

Motorists pay for the Certificate of Entitlement (COE), the Additional Registration Fee (ARF)... and with the recent loan curbs, more cash upfront as well.

Experts believe the high costs motivate car owners to maximise the use of their cars to get their money's worth.

This in turn adds to the problem of congestion.

Currently, about four in 10 households in Singapore own at least a car.

Prof Paul Barter, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said, "Singapore has a very high level of car use per car, each car is used around 20,000 kilometres per year, whereas for European or Japanese cities per year, it is more like 10,000 to 12,000 kilometres per car.

"So even though we have very low car ownership, we still have a lot of traffic because those car owners use the car more. Ideally cars would be cheaper in the future but perhaps more expensive to use, more expensive to park."

So one sustainable way could be to peg the costs with usage or distance travelled.

Prof Barter said, "At the moment you buy a COE which has 10 years, you pay ARF which last the whole time and those two amount to almost $100,000 typically for a car. What if instead of that, you bought 50,000 kilometres worth of car taxes when you bought your car, and 50,000 kilometres later you have to top up for another 50,000 kilometres of those taxes, COE and ARF, then you have the incentive not to use your car to make them last longer, so pay as you drive. This will be a way to make it more affordable, but still control traffic."

He said tracking distance can be possible should authorities go ahead with plans to implement the next generation Electronic Road Pricing system which leverages on GPS.

Experts agree there's room to make the public transport become more reliable, particularly for buses.

But other than implementing bus priority measures more aggressively, there's the need to better integrate the bus and MRT networks better to improve mobility.

And so experts are calling for a bus rapid transit or BRT system where buses travel at high frequencies on dedicated bus lanes, to be linked to the MRT system.

Associate Prof Anthony Chin, Department of Economics at NUS, said, "Transportation and mobility is part of that quality of life that we should address. It's not just about ERP, its not just about COE, because we know what the consequences are. At the end of the day, we need to talk about, for example, getting to work, fitting it into a reasonable lifestyle, reducing the stress of travel and so on and so forth.

"I want to know that when I go to the bus stop, the bus comes in five minutes. Can it be done for certain precincts to have a BRT, why not? Give it a try for the newer estates and that will improve the connectivity from the neighbourhood to the MRT stations."

Experts also called for authorities to have more open discussions about the cost-benefit analysis of transport policies, before implementing them.

- CNA/de

Pay-as-you-drive scheme suggested to curb congestion
Woo Sian Boon Today Online 16 Apr 13;

SINGAPORE — A pay-as-you-drive distance-based system and heftier parking fees were some measures transport academics mooted yesterday as alternative methods to restrain car usage and curb traffic congestion.

Speaking at a seminar on sustainable urban transport held at the National University of Singapore (NUS), transport economist Anthony Chin noted that the current system of having to fork out large upfront costs — through Certificate of Entitlement (COE) premiums and Additional Registration Fees (ARF) — to buy a car has led to a “sunk-cost effect”, in which car owners choose to drive every day to get their money’s worth. This has led to high vehicle-usage even though Singapore has low car-ownership numbers, added Associate Professor Chin of the Economics Department at the NUS.

Currently, about four in 10 households in Singapore own at least a car, with each vehicle used around 20,000km annually — about twice the mileage when compared to cars in European or Japanese cities.

Dr Paul Barter, an urban transport policy scholar at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, proposed a distance-based method in which car buyers pay the cost of COE and ARF for pre-determined distances which they can drive. For example, if a motorist purchases 50,000km worth of taxes under such a system, which will require him to pay additional taxes beyond that mileage, it could prove to be an incentive for motorists to ensure that they use the car only when needed.

Dr Barter added that the fringe costs of car usage, such as parking, should also be re-looked. He said: “Ideally, cars would be cheaper in the future, but more expensive to use and ... to park.”

Pointing to the current system in which developers of commercial buildings are required to build in a minimum area of parking space, Dr Barter argued that the current policy of providing free gross-floor-area (GFA) allowance for parking spaces in buildings is, “in a way, subsidies for Central Business District parking”. This, he felt, goes against charging buyers high ARF for their cars.

Dr Barter said: “I don’t think Singapore should be in the business of subsidising parking at all ... we’ve got our policies going against each other. We need to line them up. My suggestion is, eliminate both the GFA-free allowance and (parking space) requirements and allow developers to choose how much parking space they want to build.”

Besides the two main thrusts of traffic control and improving public transport, Dr Barter also suggested that some emphasis should be placed on creating more “liveable places” for everyone. He said: “We could re-prioritise ... so it’s not just reducing traffic, not just so that the MRT and buses work well, but also creating liveable places, so that Singapore streets can be great places.”

Former Chief Transportation Engineer for the Land Transport Authority Gopinath Menon, who spoke on the role of infrastructure and traffic control, felt that building more roads cannot be a way to eliminate traffic congestion.

Citing the example of North Bridge and South Bridge roads, which he felt had lost its cultural value, Dr Barter called for better urban planning.

“One of the dividends from controlling traffic within limits is that ... they could be much less traffic-dominated. Cars can still get around, you can still go there to park, you can arrive in them, but they should not be highways. They should be places to arrive at, not places to rush through,” he added.