wild places | wild happenings | wild news
make a difference for our wild places

home | links | search the site
  all articles latest | past | articles by topics | search wildnews
wild news on wildsingapore
  Today Online 27 Oct 06
Don't miss the sense for the dollars
Investing in transport system to make it more convenient, comfortable will reap greater rewards than operator profits
Siew Kum Hong

Today Online 26 Oct 06
Will Singaporeans ever be footloose and car-free?
Tor Ching Li chingli@mediacorp.com.sg

TRANSPORT Minister Raymond Lim has set the target, but experts said that the road to achieving it may not be straightforward.

Several barriers, including some in the mind, may have to be torn down before 70 per cent of all morning peak-hour rides are made on buses and trains--up from the current 63 per cent--they felt.

No, it won't be a simple matter of restricting car ownership through the use of the Certificate of Entitlement (COE), said transport analysts. "The fact that Mr Lim referred to 'my other car is a bus' suggests an acceptance of car ownership in the first place. So, it's more a question of controlling usage of cars," said Dr K Raguraman, head of the Physical Development Feedback Group.

Dr Paul Barter, assistant professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said: "As an item of prestige, making cars more expensive will not deter people from buying them. The Government probably realises that it has to work harder on the pull factors of public transport, rather than pushing people away from private transport."

One hurdle could be the Singaporean psyche, where the ownership of a car connotes that someone has "arrived".

Dr Victor Savage, National University of Singapore Associate Professor in Geography, said Singapore's elite will have to take the lead in breaking down this perception. "In large cities like Hong Kong, which has a very strong commuter public, you can see tycoons like Li Ka-Shing on the train. He sees nothing wrong with taking the train. The elite here must show the same attitude towards public transport," he said.

Dr Savage--who does not drive and has taken public transport all his life--recounted how some of his students ridiculed him for not owning a car.

"They asked what was I doing taking the bus when even their secondary school teachers could afford a car. I just never had the urge," said Dr Savage, adding that he sometimes waits 20 minutes for his No 7 bus.

To make public transport a lifestyle choice for more, transport analysts agree that a comprehensive approach is necessary--addressing issues including pedestrian accessibility to and from the bus stops and train stations; town planning; effective deterrents to car usage in congested areas; and the encouragement of options such as car sharing, cycling or walking.

"The non-car ownership or car-free lifestyle has to be a first-class lifestyle option," said Dr Barter.

Even as the Government is thinking of extending the reach of the MRT system, the frequency of stops in existing lines needs to be re-examined, said Dr Savage.

In densely populated areas--such as the stretch between Outram and Tanjong Pagar MRT stations--more stops should be made so that people will have to walk less from the station to their destination, especially with an ageing population, he said.

And while the steady increase in pedestrian bridges--from 408 to 415 between 2004 and last year--may look nice, they do not help the elderly and mobility-impaired, said Dr Savage.

"The fact that Singapore's town planning features some 20 satellite towns--with insufficient population density in some--inevitably makes for a transport problem as people travel trans-island to work," added Dr Savage.

With the current vehicle population of 780,000 plying the road--and a permissible growth of up to 3 per cent each year--Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) will be employed more vigorously to regulate traffic, say the experts.

Parking facilities and costs are the next most effective areas to target in the central business district. "If car ownership keeps growing, increases in ERP and parking fees will be hard to carry through unless the Government can offer an excellent alternative in the form of public transport," said Dr Barter.

In fact, the Government may be hoping for a public transport system that people will choose to use over cars, in order to continue allowing increased cars ownership.

For example, car ownership in Zurich is the highest in Europe, with one car for every 1.6 residents in 2004, yet public transport is heavily utilised.

In return for higher ERP charges, however, Dr Barter suggests that the Government may choose to share some of the ERP revenue with transport operators to facilitate better services on the latter's part.

Additional Registration Fees and COEs could, for example, be waived for car-sharing companies and taxis. Transport operators can also be more creative in their marketing, with the sale of one-year travel passes for unlimited rides.

"Once consumers make an upfront payment, they tend to be more committed to the product. It's the same theory as buying a car, and operators are guaranteed of a certain amount of income," said Dr Barter.

Since peak-hour public transport usage is the key performance indicator, is the solution to be found in the existing off-peak car scheme?

"The economics of public transport is such that you actually want off-peak riders. Any revenue from off-peak riders is almost pure profit. More peak ridership puts pressure on increasing capacity, which is then underutilised during off peak periods," said Dr Barter.

"There is no easy solution, and whatever the approach, it has to be comprehensive."

Today Online 27 Oct 06
Don't miss the sense for the dollars
Investing in transport system to make it more convenient, comfortable will reap greater rewards than operator profits
Siew Kum Hong

IN SINGAPORE, public transportation and driving are perennial hot potatoes. That's why Transport Minister Raymond Lim's recent speech is so important, elaborating as it did on the Government's philosophy on these issues.

Few would disagree that public transport is the way to go, and that we need to encourage drivers to use public transport. The crux is the relative attractiveness of driving vis-à-vis public transport.

As Mr Lim pointed out, once someone has spent so much on buying a car, he or she tends to maximise car usage, given the relatively low cost of this compared to the cost of car ownership.

Furthermore, the Government has previously stated its desire to keep the cost of using a car affordable. So, making driving less attractive is unlikely to succeed.

The best way to encourage car owners to use public transport is to make public transport a clearly more attractive value proposition than driving. Currently, car owners perceive driving offers a better overall value proposition than public transport, despite the higher expense.

As a former public transport user and current driver who has always worked within the Central Business District, I see three possible reasons for this: Time savings, comfort, and convenience of access.

For Mr Lim's vision to become a reality, public transport must get people to their destinations faster (especially during peak hours), be more comfortable and be easier for people to reach and use than a car.

Mr Lim rightly identified the rail system as the key to public transport, because it moves a lot of people around quickly without adding to road congestion. In this regard, buses are also important as they need to complement the trains by taking people from their homes to the train stations, and vice versa.

So, feeder service frequency and routes need to be re-examined. I used to take feeder service 262 to the Ang Mo Kio MRT station, which took 15 to 20 minutes excluding walking to the bus stop and waiting for the bus. In comparison, it takes me 20 to 30 minutes to drive to work, from leaving home to parking. Given that time is money, and time lost can never be regained, the choice was obvious.

Furthermore, ever since the MRT started operations, "rationalisation" has been a by-word in public transport planning. While bus routes make economic sense to operators, many commuters find them inconvenient and time-consuming.

Premium services such as BusPlus are meant to address this, but they often are infrequent and have insufficient capacity, making them an unreliable option.

As for comfort, I believe the operators do try. But the recurrent complaints about cramped seats and overcrowded and infrequent services during peak hours show insufficient resources are used to meet to peak hour demand.

Convenience of access is mostly a question of physical infrastructure — that is, how easily accessible a bus stop or train station is.

While a lot of this is difficult to change, more can be done in terms of getting people to train stations by bus. The authorities also need to encourage the trend of having a seamless underground passage from public transport facilities into buildings, as well as between buildings, perhaps by tax incentives if necessary.

The challenge here is that the measures necessary to encourage car owners to use public transport are almost certainly inconsistent with the operators' objective of maximising profits.

Investing in more buses and trains to achieve shorter waiting times and greater comfort, and duplicating more bus and train routes, is probably not economically and financially efficient from the operators' perspective, given that they will be idle resources during non-peak hours.

But if we do not do so, car owners will simply not use public transport during peak hours. If we are to be serious about controlling road congestion, then we have to address this conundrum.

A fundamental review of the appropriate level of public transport operators' profit margins — and perhaps even a reconsideration of whether profit-maximising public-listed commercial entities are the best vehicles for providing public transport in Singapore — may be required.

After all, as Mr Lim noted, congestion is a hidden tax on people's time, an external cost that the market cannot properly price for.

The Government's responsibility is to society as a whole, and economic inefficiencies from operators' perspective may well be outweighed by the savings in time and money enjoyed by the public.

Otherwise, car usage will continue to increase and congestion will only get worse.

The writer is a corporate counsel commenting in his personal capacity.
links
Related articles on Singapore: green energy
about the site | email ria
  News articles are reproduced for non-profit educational purposes.
 

website©ria tan 2003 www.wildsingapore.com