Here's something I blogged about today at
www.blueblueheeler.blogspot.com:
Since 2001, I've been driving on S'pore-roads almost on a daily basis. In 2001, I took an average of 30mins in the mornings to get from Bedok to Clementi on the ECP. Now, the same trip would take me 40-45mins. This means that since 2001, I've noticed significantly more cars on the road; more cars = slow drive.
Why are there more and more cars on S'pore roads, even though our island is small, and the public transport is relatively good?
You see, cars have gotten cheaper since 2001. My 1st car was bought new in 2001 at $62,000. Now that same car costs only about $50,000.
How can cars get cheaper in S'pore, when everyone knows our roads are limited? The govt says they are controlling traffic-usage by Electronic-Road-Pricing. This means that while more cars are being sold, traffic-jams are to be lessened by charging drivers money to use these roads. But since traffic has gotten heavier since 2001, maybe ERP charges are not high enough to deter jams. However, I'm not asking for the govt to pump-up ERP charges just to control smooth traffic flow. That would be silly, because with this kind of argument, ERP can only go up in S'pore, and never go back down.
Let's look at this logically. Every morning, I notice that 80% of passenger-cars have only one passenger; the driver. If 4 individual cars with 4 individual drivers could car-pool (i.e. share a car), there would be 1 car on the road to ferry these 4 drivers to work, instead of 4 cars.
So, perhaps a better way to ensure less cars on the road would be car-pooling. Not so long ago, there was a '4-person-per-car' rule for cars entering the city-zone during peak hours. Many 'car-pool' stands were found throughout the island for people to fetch/pick strangers to get to work. This may have made the driver/passengers uncomfortable with the new company, but at least this was a practical way of cutting the number of cars on the roads during peak hours.
Logically, car-pooling is the sensible way as it shows tangible results for reducing traffic flow in S'pore already crowded with cars. But from the govt's point-of-view, how can this compete with ERP which rakes in lotslotslotslotslotslots of money???
So, what do you think is the best way to control traffic in S'pore during peak-hours? Car-sharing during peak hours or ERP?
