I think that many asian cities have the right approach here. Treat cars as a luxury good in a space-challenged context and tax them heavily, while making sure to provide a world class public transport system so as to guarantee no-one actually needs a car.
While it doesn't have a COE, tokyo does basically the same thing. You will have to pay $50k upfront for a 10-year car permit in singapore. In Tokyo there's no upfront cost but good luck getting a car park for less than $500/m - and you'll have to prove you have one to register the car. Adds up to about the same amount.
I live 100m from a train station with 2 lines, automated trains come every 3-4 minutes, 8 minutes to my workplace. Bike share outside my door. 3 supermarkets and hundreds of shops within walking distance. If absolutely necessary, there's Uber or grab. You don't need a car here. It's a luxury for the rich, and that's pretty much as it should be IMO.
It's subtly different. The core idea is that car ownership has externalities and the implementation of solving these externalities is to limit absolute numbers and let the market decide what use to make of the quota. Luxury ownership is just one of many uses competing. Uber recently pushed prices up a bit [1] as it bought itself a rental fleet for its subsidiary Lion City Rentals; the ROI on these cars is worth more to Uber than what a citizen is prepared to pay to own a car.
A parallel might be real estate. Yes, you could run a warehouse in Wall Street, but even if you get the permits from the local planning association, you'll be outbid by the investment banks. There is even an example of "luxury" Wall Street real estate in the form of 23 Wall Street [2] which was "purposely designed to be only four stories tall" whilst surrounded by skyscrapers.
It is worth noting that the Singapore government actively works to reduce demand for cars, by increasing the quality and extent of public transport, making it accessible to all, and regulating the taxi and delivery industries carefully to enable them to be cheap and easily available. A COE-type scheme introduced in a city without high quality alternatives (such as Sydney or Los Angeles) would cause the immediate fall of the government responsible and a policy reversal from the newly elected replacement.
> A COE-type scheme introduced in a city without high quality alternatives (such as Sydney or Los Angeles) would cause the immediate fall of the government
Well of course. It's a huge undertaking which would have to be executed over a generation, which probably requires a level of bipartisan political maturity and commitment that NSW can't muster (talking about Sydney). It could certainly be done though, maybe not with a COE system but by some other method of gradually pushing people out of their cars and into an expanding public transport network.
I guess describing everything they could do would take a book, but a good first step would be getting rid of the ridiculous helmet laws so at least people could ride to the station if they want to, and provide japanese-style mass bike parking there. Then just slowly start increasing the tax on cars, petrol, parking and tolls while absolutely pouring money into infrastructure (not roads), stopping any further urban sprawl, and systematically rezoning towards higher density and walkability. In 25 years you could achieve a lot.
I agree though, not going to happen anytime soon. Things will have to get worse before they can get better.
People will resist giving up cars in areas with crappy weather, but I could see this working in many US cities west/south currently choked with traffic.
And people will claim crappy weather as an excuse almost completely independent of weather. The closest things to cities without any bad weather would have to be San Diego and Los Angeles, and the legions of cars there are just as endless as elsewhere.
The issue is that this only really works with small towns that are extremely densely populated. This falls short for much of the US whose towns are extremely spread out and sparsely populated.
Yes, the US has a problem with sprawling cities and suburbs, driving is part of the culture but it's a myth that it only works for small cities, one that I've seen repeated here and on reddit far too many times.
I used to live on the east coast and saw kids riding the subway all the time. It's no different than taking them into a store.
A bonus of public transport is that you can let your kids do whatever once they hit 13. There's always a few awkward years where they can basically care for themselves but can't drive.
Today's parents are way too paranoid. My mom grew up in the country and back then all the kids were driving by 12 even in town. I think modern age limits are more about making sure you can get charges to stick in court than a safety issue
I used to walk to school alone when I was little. When I was a little older I walked my younger brother to his school, then I walked to mine. My parents didn't need a car to do that for us.
However all of us used a car to go shopping once a week. A four people family buys an incredible amount of stuff. Sometimes I walked with my mother to small shops to buy fresh food during the week.
We also walked to health care centers. Everything was in a 20, maybe 30 minutes range.
If cities are planned to place homes close to important locations there is little need for cars.
Lee Kuan Yew actually thought, almost a decade ago, that he didn't go far enough:
“I knew that once people in Singapore could have a car, they’d never give it up. So, before it got out of control, I said you need a Certificate Of Entitlement before a car is yours; and the permitted up-tick in number of cars depends on what the road capacity is. That was the first move. So, you bid for it. If you issue more entitlement certificates than is prudent, roads are jammed. Then a younger generation took over and says, well, why not have more cars and we charge them by the usage on the roads instead of just purchase? I told them, okay, okay, have a car, have more cars! But once you’ve got a car, you will never give it up.” [...]
“I was moved on policy-thinking about transit by psychology. They are moved by maximizing road space. Okay, then you would antagonize more motorists. I would rather have less cars and get everybody to use the public transport, but a younger generation thinks this is the way to go and you are in charge, then go for more cars.”
I remember being in LA in the 2000s, and not renting a car (the innocence of growing up in Europe...). I sampled the buses that took 1.5 hours to go from Beverly Hills to Downtown. I paid $200 for a return cab ride from Santa Monica to Hollywood at rush hour.
In comparison, if the MRT has a 30 minute delay in Singapore it is national news [2].
Random anecdote: I commute by MRT. I guess my average wait time is around three to max five minutes on the platform.
I'm used to public transportation from Germany, but SG's transportation is so much better and very affordable on top. Cabs, Grab and (no clue, never used it myself) Uber are cheap when you need an alternative. I had a car for most of my life in Germany, don't miss it a single bit in SG.
I've used both MRT in Singapore and MTR in Hong Kong extensively and it's simply the future. Individually owned transit vehicles only makes sense in rural areas where there are no options. In larger cities, the only thing that makes sense is public transport. The externalities of individual car ownership creates so many negative factors in a cramped city environment that I'm convinced we'll look back at it and laugh in a hundred years. There won't be individual car ownership (except for collectors) because noone will want the liability when comparing it to the options.
It is important to note that Singapore/HongKong have world class, reliable and reachable public transport. The MTR is heavenly. The population is concentrated in big, tall buildings. Not quite the "lifestyle" but I can see why banning cars is important here.
Given that the standard of living is high, pretty much everyone will be able to afford cars if they cost the real market price. This will make movement impossible even if the populace owned cars just for leisure use.
Amazing! This more than anything else seems so sci-fi to me. Reminds me of the Diamond Age somehow. In the US we have so much space we take for granted building a new road a new subdivision a new 5acre parking lot. Imagine if there was no more space. Cars now become a whole lot more of a questionable use of space.
This doesn't surprise me. Already they are trying to economically limit the number of cars there (as mentioned in the article). Singapore has an extremely efficient public transport system and a culture that already isn't highly dependant on cars so I don't see a massive social shift being in order to accomodate the plan.
I spent a week in the South of France recently and the first Sunday morning I was sitting outside and this whisper of a train came by. No horns, whistles, smoke, noise. The service runs the coast every 30 mins. I thought about this joke service here in the Boston area and realized that we'll never have this in the USA; not this side of the Civil War 2 anyway.
I think it's overall a good move, given 12% of their land is used up by transport networks and it's a tiny island.
That said, if space is a real constraint, I think they could make a deal with Malaysia, if they really needed to, but I think their independent streak is too strong to allow that thought --they once were part of it, pre-independence. On the other hand there are "autonomous" regions out there.
The question[1] has been considered in some circles, although more fantasy than anything else due to enormous, maybe insurmountable, cultural and ethnic differences. One is Sinetic the other Malay --and in the past lead to some terrible ethnic riots.
Singapore has a lot to gain from it's independence from Malaysia and the ideologies on how to govern a country differ greatly from the 2 ruling parties so little chance of joining together.
That said, Singapore has been friendly with neighbouring Johor for many years so a deal could be possible given the state's own ambitions.
its like a bad breakup. Singapore and Malaysia were married, got into a huge fight, separated, and after living happily as neighbors for 50 years you want them to make a deal to cohabitate again?
It's funny to look at the history. When Singapore separated from Malaysia, many people thought that Singapore wouldn't be able to survive as an independent nation island state, with no natural resources. Today Singapore has the last laugh; they're the regional economic superpower.
I never really understood why governments insist on restricting vehicles and not access to roads. It seems like the scarce resource is efficient road access, not space for cars (even in sg, where there's not a whole lot of that either).
It's a toll system, that taxes you for driving on key roads during rush hours. Say electronic "Drive on this road before 9.30 and you'll be taxed 2.5 dollar" signs.
That feels like a decent idea to me?
It's a great system. The swiftness with which the singapore government installed electronic sensors _in every single car in singapore_ was also breathtaking. Bloomberg tried to do an ERP in NYC when he was mayor, but he couldn't get it through. I wish he had!
I proposed this in a business class once where our task was to solve Toronto's congestion problem. I cited many numerous instances where this has worked in many cities with far greater population density and car usage than Toronto - I received a poor grade and was told my idea of taxing the roads are stupid.
I'm guessing that adding one extra check to the bureaucratic process of registering a car is way, way cheaper than enforcing road access to a metropolis.
Idunno, just have ingress and egress scanners around the hot zones. ingress detected -> start accounting for higher rate, egress detected -> start accounting for lower rate.
Driving a vehicle outside the legal parameters (i.e. without paying the access fee) will carry classic Singaporean sentencing rules.
The costs of running a vehicle are mostly sunk costs. The capital, license & insurance costs of the car are higher than the marginal costs of gasoline & maintenance. This moves the decision point for vehicle usage to when you buy the car, so loading the costs there too may have some benefit.
Readit News
While it doesn't have a COE, tokyo does basically the same thing. You will have to pay $50k upfront for a 10-year car permit in singapore. In Tokyo there's no upfront cost but good luck getting a car park for less than $500/m - and you'll have to prove you have one to register the car. Adds up to about the same amount.
I live 100m from a train station with 2 lines, automated trains come every 3-4 minutes, 8 minutes to my workplace. Bike share outside my door. 3 supermarkets and hundreds of shops within walking distance. If absolutely necessary, there's Uber or grab. You don't need a car here. It's a luxury for the rich, and that's pretty much as it should be IMO.
It's subtly different. The core idea is that car ownership has externalities and the implementation of solving these externalities is to limit absolute numbers and let the market decide what use to make of the quota. Luxury ownership is just one of many uses competing. Uber recently pushed prices up a bit [1] as it bought itself a rental fleet for its subsidiary Lion City Rentals; the ROI on these cars is worth more to Uber than what a citizen is prepared to pay to own a car.
A parallel might be real estate. Yes, you could run a warehouse in Wall Street, but even if you get the permits from the local planning association, you'll be outbid by the investment banks. There is even an example of "luxury" Wall Street real estate in the form of 23 Wall Street [2] which was "purposely designed to be only four stories tall" whilst surrounded by skyscrapers.
It is worth noting that the Singapore government actively works to reduce demand for cars, by increasing the quality and extent of public transport, making it accessible to all, and regulating the taxi and delivery industries carefully to enable them to be cheap and easily available. A COE-type scheme introduced in a city without high quality alternatives (such as Sydney or Los Angeles) would cause the immediate fall of the government responsible and a policy reversal from the newly elected replacement.
[1] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/uber-bids-co...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_Wall_Street aka the "House of Morgan"
Well of course. It's a huge undertaking which would have to be executed over a generation, which probably requires a level of bipartisan political maturity and commitment that NSW can't muster (talking about Sydney). It could certainly be done though, maybe not with a COE system but by some other method of gradually pushing people out of their cars and into an expanding public transport network.
I guess describing everything they could do would take a book, but a good first step would be getting rid of the ridiculous helmet laws so at least people could ride to the station if they want to, and provide japanese-style mass bike parking there. Then just slowly start increasing the tax on cars, petrol, parking and tolls while absolutely pouring money into infrastructure (not roads), stopping any further urban sprawl, and systematically rezoning towards higher density and walkability. In 25 years you could achieve a lot.
I agree though, not going to happen anytime soon. Things will have to get worse before they can get better.
Yes, the US has a problem with sprawling cities and suburbs, driving is part of the culture but it's a myth that it only works for small cities, one that I've seen repeated here and on reddit far too many times.
Parents of children under 12 should also be given a pass.
(Unless outsourcing the population is a deliberate tactic, of course.)
A bonus of public transport is that you can let your kids do whatever once they hit 13. There's always a few awkward years where they can basically care for themselves but can't drive.
Today's parents are way too paranoid. My mom grew up in the country and back then all the kids were driving by 12 even in town. I think modern age limits are more about making sure you can get charges to stick in court than a safety issue
I used to walk to school alone when I was little. When I was a little older I walked my younger brother to his school, then I walked to mine. My parents didn't need a car to do that for us.
However all of us used a car to go shopping once a week. A four people family buys an incredible amount of stuff. Sometimes I walked with my mother to small shops to buy fresh food during the week.
We also walked to health care centers. Everything was in a 20, maybe 30 minutes range.
If cities are planned to place homes close to important locations there is little need for cars.
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/09/why-are-littl...
“I knew that once people in Singapore could have a car, they’d never give it up. So, before it got out of control, I said you need a Certificate Of Entitlement before a car is yours; and the permitted up-tick in number of cars depends on what the road capacity is. That was the first move. So, you bid for it. If you issue more entitlement certificates than is prudent, roads are jammed. Then a younger generation took over and says, well, why not have more cars and we charge them by the usage on the roads instead of just purchase? I told them, okay, okay, have a car, have more cars! But once you’ve got a car, you will never give it up.” [...]
“I was moved on policy-thinking about transit by psychology. They are moved by maximizing road space. Okay, then you would antagonize more motorists. I would rather have less cars and get everybody to use the public transport, but a younger generation thinks this is the way to go and you are in charge, then go for more cars.”
I remember being in LA in the 2000s, and not renting a car (the innocence of growing up in Europe...). I sampled the buses that took 1.5 hours to go from Beverly Hills to Downtown. I paid $200 for a return cab ride from Santa Monica to Hollywood at rush hour.
In comparison, if the MRT has a 30 minute delay in Singapore it is national news [2].
[1] Tom Plate, Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew - https://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Lee-Kuan-Yew-Singapore/...
[2] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/commuters-hi...
I'm used to public transportation from Germany, but SG's transportation is so much better and very affordable on top. Cabs, Grab and (no clue, never used it myself) Uber are cheap when you need an alternative. I had a car for most of my life in Germany, don't miss it a single bit in SG.
Deleted Comment
Given that the standard of living is high, pretty much everyone will be able to afford cars if they cost the real market price. This will make movement impossible even if the populace owned cars just for leisure use.
That said, if space is a real constraint, I think they could make a deal with Malaysia, if they really needed to, but I think their independent streak is too strong to allow that thought --they once were part of it, pre-independence. On the other hand there are "autonomous" regions out there.
The question[1] has been considered in some circles, although more fantasy than anything else due to enormous, maybe insurmountable, cultural and ethnic differences. One is Sinetic the other Malay --and in the past lead to some terrible ethnic riots.
[1]https://www.quora.com/What-if-Singapore-combines-with-Malays...
You got that right. This will never happen.
That said, Singapore has been friendly with neighbouring Johor for many years so a deal could be possible given the state's own ambitions.
It's a toll system, that taxes you for driving on key roads during rush hours. Say electronic "Drive on this road before 9.30 and you'll be taxed 2.5 dollar" signs. That feels like a decent idea to me?
1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing
Driving a vehicle outside the legal parameters (i.e. without paying the access fee) will carry classic Singaporean sentencing rules.
http://roadpricing.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/singapore-will-ha...
It seems like they could do more interesting things with it in the future though. :- )