The Singapore government have had the luxury of a string of uninterrupted victories at general elections for 63 years, from before independence. Fortunately, it did not get wasted as Singapore at independence was blessed with a crop of capable, if autocratic, leaders. Their foresight and the political environment has enabled the ruling party to use this almost guaranteed mandate to plan in a long term. And when I say long-term, I do mean long-term: 30 to 40 years. Planning seems to be something that the Singapore government do very well. While there are many areas with excellent examples that will illustrate this, in this article I will just focus on certain parts of public transportation, particularly the road policy.
Driving in Singapore
Two things have always astound me when driving in Singapore. I have always found it amazing that the roads are wide even though Singapore is a country with limited land area. Secondly, I rarely see any roadworks, other than the occasional road repairs.
The first point is really one of the many consequences of the government’s policy to make driving a limited and expensive affair for Singaporean citizens but at the same time aiming to give a pleasant and positive experience to whoever gets to drive in Singapore. Roads are normally three or four lanes in the city centre and are normally jam-free - congestion during times of heavy traffic maybe, but no standstill like what you would get in Bangkok or Jakarta.
There are quite a few motorways that criss-cross the island even though it takes less than an hour to drive from one end of the country to the other. Apparently, there are stretches of motorways that were designed to be straight and level for air force combat jets to use in the event their airfields were knocked out during a war. Of course, none of this is confirmed and we do not know which stretch of motorway was built that way. But, this, if true, is very much in line with the government's penchant for planning on a holistic basis.
The absence of roadworks is due partly to the fact that when they built the roads back in the 80s, they built it with conduits. They probably did not know what fibre optics were in those days but when time came to lay fibre optic cables, it was just a simple matter of pulling them through the conduits. Not like much of the rest of the world where we have to dig up roads to lay cables.
Pricing on the roads
Singapore was also one of the first cities in the world to impose a congestion charge but it is a lot more sophisticated than most others. Pricing differs by the time of the day and the location. There are gantries at all entrances into the central districts of the city and the pricing & timing of the charge are displayed on the gantries. This pricing can be changed at a keystroke with no signs or anything to change. Cars detected passing through the gantries will have the charge deducted directly from a prepaid cash card in a unit in the car.
What’s more, this cash card is also used for parking throughout the city in public and private carparks, with the exception of on-street parking. They are no longer any car park cards, tickets, payment booths or car park payment machines in any covered car park in the city. Car park gates will open for you to enter and will deduct the car park charges without you having to roll down your windows. Anywhere in the city. Seamless.
And oh yes, because carpark charges are automated and cashless, some car parks even innovated to charge by the minute. After all a $3 an hour car park charge equates to 5 cents a minute. All these work because the Government-owned company that manages the card system charges a fraction of 1% to private carparks for its use. It then became cost-effective for private carparks to move completely to using this card for car park charges, making it ubiquitous. Every car in Singapore has one, whether they enter the central city district or not.
Limiting cars on the road
The big success of the Singaporean car policy is premised on limiting the amount of cars on the road. Of course the first step is making public transportation effective and efficient. Cars and trains runs all over the city and on time. Singaporean buses had the arrival time displayed on screens at bus stops long before this function became widespread on phone apps.
Of course this only works if buses and trains run on time and Singapore prides itself on this score. A few years ago, there was a spate of underground train delays in a single month and it became a discussion point at Cabinet meetings. Public transportation can only work if governments give it that level of priority.
The government limits cars on the roads in a very innovative and unique way. First they work out the number of cars that the roads can take. They also know how many cars will be retired that year and so they can then work out the number of new cars allowed on the road that year. That is the number of certificates of entitlement (‘CoE’) that the government will issue that year, which every car is required to have to be allowed on the road. So, if you want to buy a car, you need to first obtain a CoE to enable you to drive a car on Singaporean roads.
And how do you get the certificate? You bid for it. Every month prospective car owners bid for a set number of CoE that will be issued for that month. This method of allocation is transparent and prices the need for a car appropriately. There is always public transportation for those for whom the CoE puts car ownership out of reach but if you feel you need a car over and above the efficient public transport that already exist, you pay for it in accordance to how much you value that additional convenience.
The CoE is not cheap: the last auction priced it at around US$80,000. This is for ten years and you have to pay this on top of the price of the car, which in itself is very expensive in Singapore because of the taxes imposed. Cars in Singapore normally cost two or three times what you would pay in Europe or America. As a result, you usually only see higher end cars on Singaporean road because it doesn't make sense to pay US$80,000 for the right to drive a budget car. You can extend the ten year CoE but only with a new CoE: then again, who would want to pay so much to drive an old car, unless of course it is an old vintage car. Interestingly, there are constant debates in Singapore on how to improve the system, transparent and efficient as it is.
Petrol is very expensive in Singapore because of the high taxes imposed on petrol by a government keen to limit private car usage. Petrol however is very cheap in neighbouring Malaysia due to subsidies. To avoid Singaporeans driving over to Malaysia and topping up their fuel tanks with cheap Malaysian petrol, Singaporean cars are to have their fuel tanks 3/4 full when they leave Singapore. So, there is a limit to the amount of cheap Malaysian petrol Singaporeans can come back home with and deprive the government of their taxes.
Foreign cars are not forgotten as well. To avoid Singaporeans registering a Malaysian car for use in Singapore – avoiding CoE and the expensive Singaporean petrol tax, foreign registered cars are required to pay a daily charge for the right to be in Singapore during business hours. Again, this is done efficiently and seamlessly with an auto-pass card, different from the cash card that Singaporean cars use. This auto-pass card is used to enter and leave Singapore with the appropriate charge deducted on departure. If the car entered the central city district, those charges will also be deducted on departure.
You can see here that the Singaporean government has been very intelligent in achieving its objectives of efficiently and effectively managing road use in Singapore. When Singapore first became independent, the government aimed to be like Switzerland where everything runs like clockwork. One can safely say that they have achieved that objective. If anything, they have exceeded it.
Comments