MAIN AND DEVELOPMENT ESTIMATES OF SINGAPORE FOR THE - FINANCIAL YEAR 1ST APRIL, 1985 TO 31 ST MARCH, 1986
Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, with your permission, could I ask the Clerk to distribute these pictures? [Copies of pictures distributed to Members.] Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, first let me thank the very many Members who have spoken about our land transport problems. This is important because land transport affects everybody everyday, when we go to work as well as when we go home. And no matter how popular a policy is, unless that policy works, then all of us are going to find our lives made very miserable. Worse still, our economy is going to be severely affected if we have serious traffic jams on our roads everyday, from morning till night. Sir, there are many things we can find fault with our transport policy. But one thing, I think many will agree that our land transport policy works. Cars, buses, lorries, taxis, mini-buses, by and large, are able to move around freely. Unlike many cities, we do not have severe traffic jams everyday. What does it mean to have traffic jams? What is its impact on us? Who suffers if there are severe traffic jams? Who benefits if our roads are free from serious traffic jams? I think the answer is obvious. All of us benefit from that if our roads can be kept reasonably free, if our cars, our buses, our lorries can flow freely. Sir, this is really the basis of our land transport policy. If we have massive traffic jams everyday, what does it mean? It means that we have got to go to work much earlier every morning. It means that we have got to come home much later every evening. It means that there will be less leisure time at home with the children, watch TV, read a book, take up some hobby. Or it means that if you want to keep the amount of time that we spend in toto out of home by allowing more time on the road going to and coming home from work, there will be less time spent at work and that will severely affect our productivity. Being caught in traffic jams, whether it is in a bus, in a taxi, in a mini-bus, means total frustration, being unable to move, and this is made worse if you are in an emergency, wanting to go to some place in a hurry. Serious traffic jams can also mean a change in our life-styles. Having suffered two traffic jams a day and having got home, the last thing you want to do is to leave your house again. You become effectively a prisoner in your own home, And traffic jam means all of us will be wasting a lot of time, and time is one precious commodity, time is the only resource that each one of us will never ever get more of it. So that is what we mean when we are talking about traffic jams. Sir, I circulated some of the pictures to illustrate the traffic jams that we do see in Singapore. Fortunately for us, these occur off and on, not everyday, fortunately. But it tells us what can happen if we do not take our land transport policy seriously. Other countries have gone that way and have found themselves in a position where the pictures that we see are everyday happenings. In Singapore, pictures like these make news because they are not frequent, but the capacity of our roads is being used up very, very quickly. Every time something happens, something goes amiss, you get a massive traffic jam. That shows how close our roads are to full capacity. Each time a car breaks down and blocks up a lane, you get a serious traffic jam on your hand. Each time you get a collision, lanes are choked up, another traffic jam is on the way. Yesterday's Singapore Monitor reported with pictures of collisions: 'A crash involving three cars near the junction of Mandai Road and Woodlands Road at 2 pm caused a massive traffic jam on both sides of the dual carriageway.' Earlier on, there were other traffic jams due to different phenomena, due to other causes such as on 13 February, Singapore Monitor: 'A heavy downpour yesterday afternoon caused floods and massive traffic jams in several parts of the island. Many office workers were late in getting back to work after the lunch break.' Even durians can cause traffic jams (Singapore Monitor, 12 February 1985): 'Traffic snarl in Pasir Panjang due to durian glut: Motorists are finding themselves in bumper-to-bumper [bumper-to-bumper traffic] in the lanes leading to the market.' Our water pipes burst, you get massive traffic jams again (Straits Times, Wednesday, 13 February 1985): 'it is not every day that you get a traffic jam in the city area - thanks to the area licensing scheme. But yesterday, hundreds of workers were late for work [hundreds of workers were late for work] because of a massive traffic jam during the morning peak hours. Some spent hours in the 21/2-km-long traffic jam which left both drivers and passengers fuming...' and so on. Sir, our roads are getting very close to capacity and we must do something about it. All of us remember the traffic jams due to the Orchard Road lights. We remember the traffic jams due to the Chinatown lights. What does it all mean? It means that water is up to our neck. We do not have that much room to manoeuvre to allow a lot more vehicles onto our roads. Every road built has got a certain capacity which transport engineers can measure. Every intersection that you have is like a bottle-neck. It can only allow so many vehicles to go past at any one time. We have been extremely fortunate that up till now, with a number of means, we have been able to contain our traffic problems such that, by and large, traffic flows fairly freely. And anybody who is honest and who has been around to some other cities would know full well what the difference is between traffic in Singapore and traffic in some of these cities. So in spite of the unpopularity, our policies work. Sir, why do we have all these policies that make our people unhappy? I think the answer is very simple and it goes back to the basics of Singapore. We must look at the basics so that we will never ever forget the sort of constraints that we work under in Singapore. Sir, Singapore has approximately 600 sq km on the mainland. On this piece of land we build our homes, our factories, our offices, our playgrounds, our open space. At the same time, we must have enough catchment to collect enough water for us. On top of it, we need training area for the SAF in order to defend ourselves. And then we also need the roads for our cars. Sir, our Government is committed to a programme of housing everybody, home ownership for everybody, 100% home ownership by 1999. So if we are not prepared to work policies that will not eat up all the land that we have and convert them into roads, then it is only rational that the number of cars cannot be allowed to grow uncontrolled. 4.00 pm We have 600,000 households in Singapore. We already have about 220,000 cars on our roads and our roads are straining under this capacity. We are getting very close. We are running out of land and that is no secret. Everybody knows it. The Minister for National Development, in spite of his great sympathy for those with only one member in the family wanting to have his own flat, recently explained why it cannot be done because there is just not enough land to build the extra number of flats needed if that policy were to be allowed. The Minister of State for Defence also talked about the desperate need, the encroachment by all the other demands, on training areas for the SAF. We have already given a lot of land for the building of roads. We have already given about 8% of the total land area in Singapore for roads. I want to make a quick comparison, Sir, of how severely built-up as far as roads are concerned compared with some of the countries that we always think of as being very very congested. In Singapore, we have 2,600 km of roads. If we take only the main island, ie, approximately 586 sq km, we have about 4,436 metres of roads per sq km. Let us compare it with Japan, another country that is known for the compactness, for the desperation, for the shortage of land. Japan, according to the ESCAP figures for 1983, has 2,929 metres of roads per sq km. In other words, we have one and a half times as many roads per sq km compared to Japan. Take Hong Kong, another place also well known for its congestion. Again, according to ESCAP, Hong Kong has 1,092 metres of roads per sq km. In other words, we have four and a half times as many roads per sq km as that in Hong Kong. Sir, these figures are just to give us a feel for how much land we have already given for our roads, how tight our situation is. Over the past eight years, the PWD embarked upon a very ambitious programme for the building of expressways, widening of roads, construction of flyovers, interchanges and so forth. We built 170 km of roads and they include the Pan Island Expressway, the Central Expressway, the East Coast Parkway and now partly the Ayer Rajah Expressway and the Bukit Timah Expressway. Sir, if we were in another country where there is no limit to the land, we can carry on building. But, unfortunately, we are Singapore, Our road building programme is coming to an end. Five more years and all the expressways that will be built in Singapore would have been built. Then, except for new housing estates that will be coming up at the various pieces of land that are left, there may not be any more roads to be built in Singapore. Our office blocks and our housing flats are already so near our roads that it is not possible any more to widen our existing roads. Sir, I said that the objective of our land transport policy is to prevent ourselves from getting into that position from which we cannot extricate ourselves, ie, massive traffic jams from morning till night, day after day. Sir, what are the options open to us to achieve this objective? The first option is to do nothing. This may sound laughable to some people but it is being practised in many countries. Of course, they do not say it but when one looks at it, one knows that that is what they are doing, a do-nothing approach. Why? Because many governments do not like to do unpopular things. Governments do not like to do painful things. So they ignore the problem. In my job, I have met many Ministers from Asia, from Europe, and inevitably the conversation comes to free movement of traffic in our city. They tell us that they envy our situation. They tell us about their problems at home. They are different from ours, of course. I tell them my problems. I tell them that the Minister for Communications in Singapore is never a popular Minister because of the sort of things that have got to be done again and again. I tell them about the high taxes that our people pay. I tell them about the drawing of bus lanes to give priority to our buses which are more effective space users in terms of mass transportation. They say they wished they could do the same. But they shook their heads. Some countries prefer to allow the traffic jams to dissuade people from buying more cars. Of course, that is a solution. But is it a solution that we in Singapore would like to adopt? Our approach to land transportation, as I emphasize again, is to prevent massive traffic jams on our roads. Prevention is, of course, better than cure. But prevention is not a very popular thing to do. Try persuading smokers to give up smoking so that they do not get lung cancer and all the other complications. Try persuading people to keep fit so that they do not have problems of the heart, so that they do not have problems with high blood pressure. A few, a very few, may accept with great reluctance and act upon it. Most would prefer not to hear about it and others would just simply turn away. Sir, we have been working across a broad front in trying to prevent massive traffic congestion. We have been systematically improving the roads that we have. I mentioned that a moment ago. We have been systematically upgrading our bus service, systematically, so much so that everyday our bus service carries more than two million passenger trips a day. Of course, with so many people using the transportation system, it is unlikely that all of them will find it satisfactory. So there will be complaints and it works out to be about four complaints per million passenger trips. We have also systematically computerized our traffic junctions, our traffic signals, so that we get the maximum out of the capacity of that traffic junction. We have started adding more and more bus lanes in order to make buses move a little faster, and so on. Sir, with all these measures, we will not be able to prevent traffic jams unless we tackle the root problem, which is, adding more and more and more cars on to our roads, knowing full well that our roads have only a certain capacity. We cannot wave a magic wand and wish the problem away because the roads have only a certain capacity. Just like a bottle, it has got a certain capacity and we cannot keep pouring in more and more and more. And that is why, Sir, we must continue to find ways and means of controlling the rapid growth of cars in Singapore. Sir, I would welcome all suggestions from Members of the House on how this basic problem can be tackled. But let us not pretend that there is no problem. There is a problem and it is a very serious problem. Over the next five years, we will be building roads at approximately 3% a year when the massive road building programme comes to an end. If we have growth of cars much faster than that percentage, our roads are not going to be able to take it. We are not going to read about traffic jams in the newspapers because they will cease to be newsworthy. Now, I move on to talk briefly about taxis. I have explained why we must not allow our car population to grow to unmanageable levels. I will now explain why we cannot allow our taxi population to continue growing, also without limitation, and why we cannot allow the present taxi situation of low fares and taxes to continue. Our twin objectives with regard to taxis are, firstly, to give the taxi drivers an increase in income and, secondly, to arrive at a better level of taxi service. 4.15 pm Sir, the most important thing that I want to stress is that a taxi is really a car with a different name. Imagine a situation in the evening, after work. If we can persuade 80 people not to drive home in 40 cars, but these 80 people instead take 40 taxis home. Have we done anything to our congestion problem? However, if you can persuade 80 people not to drive in 40 cars, but to take the bus instead, would you have done something significant or important to your congestion problem? Sir, that is our fundamental approach to the problem of taxis. We cannot allow our taxis to grow in numbers, indefinitely. We have been adding taxis to the fleet over the last 10 years at the rate of about 7% a year. We cannot go on doing that. Because, even with 7% additions a year on the average, the demand for taxis continues to far exceed supply. As a result, there have been continuous complaints, 60% of commuters complain about the unavailability of taxis, another 32% complain that taxis would not take them to faraway places. All these, we believe, are due to the very, very low taxes, using very, very low cost fuel, and hence causing an excessively high demand for taxis. Sir, our taxi fares are extremely cheap, by comparison with most cities of our level of development. Before the price increase, the taxi fares in other cities are something like this: Hong Kong was slightly more than twice that in Singapore; Taipei again was slightly more than twice that of Singapore; Tokyo taxi fares cost about four times more than in Singapore; New York is about three times; London 2,3 times; Sydney 31/2 times. So our fares were very cheap. Again, what are the options open to us? One option is to do nothing. Let the situation deteriorate. Let the service gets worse and worse. Let the commuters complain about the impossibility of getting a taxi. Let the taxi drivers complain about how difficult it is to make a living. Is that the option we want? Alternatively, we keep on adding more and more taxis. But if we keep the taxi fares constant, then as the income levels go up, more and more people are able to afford to take taxis. And remember there are over a million passengers taking buses every day. If income levels rise high enough, many of them will not take buses. Many of them will prefer to take a taxi. We will not be able to solve our taxi problem that way. Let us be realistic. Let us look at the root problem. The problem is, over the years while we have been increasing the petrol duty for cars in order to slow down the growth of cars, we have left the diesel tax alone. As a result petrol now costs $1.51 per litre whereas diesel costs 56 cents. That discrepancy, that very big difference in fuel cost, is responsible for the very low fares for our taxis. So we must move on. We must make a correction, even though it is unpleasant, even though it is unpopular. But we hope, after the adjustment, the standard of taxi service in Singapore will improve significantly, when more and more drivers will want to drive because it is attractive. They will earn more, if they drive more. Of course, those who drive less will earn less. This way of structuring the fares will encourage our taxi drivers to make the most of our taxis and not to leave their taxis idling around. The more they drive, the more they earn. The harder they work, the more income they have. And this is a fundamental principle that has been responsible for the success of Singapore over the past 25 years. In short, hard work pays, and pays well. Sir, while I am aware that the increase in taxi fares has given rise to some apprehension, I expect the apprehension to subside in due course when the system has been tried and when taxi drivers, as well as commuters, find that they benefit from the new service as a result of the change in structure and fare.