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Singapore To Stop Adding Cars to City From February 2018 (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Singapore, among the world's most expensive places to own a vehicle, will stop increasing the total number of cars on its roads next year. The government will cut the annual growth rate for cars and motorcycles to zero from 0.25 percent starting in February, the transport regulator said on Monday. "In view of land constraints and competing needs, there is limited scope for further expansion of the road network," the Land Transport Authority said in a statement on its website. Roads already account for 12 percent of the city-state's total land area, it said. Smaller than New York City, land in Singapore is a precious commodity and officials want to ensure the most productive use of the remaining space. Its infrastructure is among the world's most efficient and the government is investing $21 billion more on rail and bus transportation over the next five years, the regulator said.
"Adding Cars to City".
Help me out? This means no new cars will be sold? Who does the "adding"?
And again everyone refuses to identify the root cause of the problem here, which is overpopulation.
Overpopulation is the root cause of all our environmental problems, only one of which is lack of space.
I was confused a bit on how this was managed. I decided to pull up the Wikipedia article on Singapore. Here is the exact quote from Wikipedia "Singapore is a unitary multiparty parliamentary republic, with a Westminster system of unicameral parliamentary government." I'm sure there is someone out there with a higher intelligence that might be able to explain that. I need a aspirin for my headache after reading that twice.
Sent from my TARDIS
And only the rich will be able to afford a car in Singapore.
Caution: Contents under pressure
If Singapore wasn't going to be underwater in 100 years I would totally move there. Hopefully NYC can do something like this with Manhattan. Cars were a historical wrong turn.
Lived that for four years, exceptional public transport (dare I say best in the world)... also the taxi fares are dirty cheap.
So the punishment for vandalizing cars would by upped from six strokes of cane, for guilty pleas, to 12. For non guilty pleas it will go up from 12 strokes to 24. It also provides for a process to show respect for foreign heads of state by reducing the number of strokes by 33%.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Stop adding homes. No homes, no people. No people, no cars.
If anyone honestly thinks that increasing human density (regardless of whether they have cars or not) is sustainable they are kidding themselves.
Long-term you are going to have to decentralize work places (so everyone doesn't have to keep on commuting downtown). Let people work from home and/or limit the number of companies per area.
Being mayor of Singapore is apparently the dream job I never knew existed...
People who have been there or who live there know this - the private car ownership thing is just not the same. It's a reasonably small city, and has excellent public transport or taxis. I've been several times, I've never been in a private car there.
Don't compare this to the UK or US - it's a completely different situation, and it would seem to make sense to me.
You know, if you are going to copy paste the article anyways, better put the parts people will be asking questions about:
"These changes are not expected to significantly affect the supply of permits since the quota is determined largely by the number of vehicle deregistrations, the regulator said. The limit on vehicle growth rate will be reviewed again in 2020."
Efficient and plentiful public transport, plenty of bicycle lanes, little to no private cars.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Singapore has tightly controlled car volumes for decades in no small part by its utterly oppressive tax scheme. Cars have long been just a luxury for the upper class, and the overall number of vehicles on the island had already been falling across all vehicle categories anyway. This completely theoretical reduction of a non-existent growth rate from 0.25% to zero is on a population of less than a million vehicles (so less than 2.5k/year), and they're going to reevaluate the "reduction" in less than 3 years. I don't see how this changes much if anything in the real world.
Singapore is the kind of place where 'adding cars' would be worded in a way that indicates that it is the responsibility of 'authorities' to increase the number of cars on the road.
Social harmony is very, very important in Singapore. I am surprised there isn't an approved list of vehicle colors. Red and Black cars are permitted, but Red can only be used for official vehicles, and only several very expensive models can be 'added' that are finished in the color black. Teal and 'mustard' colored cars will be the norm, because those are the colors deemed less jarring to the eye.
I'm jealous
Hardly anyone will notice, since they only have 12~14 cars per 100 people in Singapore (different sources give slightly different numbers) and they have a world-class public transit system which makes car ownership more of a hassle than it's worth.
Here in Taipei it's similar, but less so... Overall car ownership in Taiwan is about twice that of Singapore, but that includes a ton of rural area, which Singapore lacks. In a big city with excellent public transit, there's really no need for a car. Hell, I even gave away my scooter a few years ago.
I'd say the bulk of the traffic in Taipei is: a) local "fleet" vehicles like taxis, buses, delivery vans; b) commuters to and from the surrounding 'burbs; c) scooters, motorcycles, bicycles, etc.. Commuters in the 'burbs tend to have a designated parking space at their apartment block, and another designated space at their employer in the city. Commuters who live in the city are far less likely to have a designated parking spot at home*, so they may spend half an hour looking for one when they get home from work. Major PITA.
OTOH, with public transit you can get all the way across town in under 45 minutes for $1~2 USD, or you can cut that time in half (depending on traffic) by taking a taxi for about $8~12 USD.
I do enjoy driving -- growing up in Iowa, I drove all the time, from age 14 -- but living in a city like Taipei, I'm quite happy NOT owning a car, or any motor vehicle, for that matter.
* Due to land availability, a higher percentage of residential housing in Taipei is "old construction" from the days when common folk didn't own cars. Newer construction (say, the last 30 years) tends to always include parking, but there's been more new construction in the open lands outside the city, and since the rent tends to be cheaper, a lot of people live there.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Only old people use cars, grandpa.
The smart way they do it is by limiting license plates, and instead of costly trials or lawsuits, they just crush your car if it's not licensed.
On the spot.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Singapore - the best example of how sometimes you need an authority to decide in favor of group rights over individual rights. Too much freedom can be a curse.
Make room for hype-R-loops ;)
Hardly anyone will notice, since they only have 12~14 cars per 100 people in Singapore
People will notice, specifically because they are rare. This makes them powerful status symbols. This change will make car ownership even more exclusive. Singapore chicks will definitely notice if you drive a nice car (that likely cost $120k or more after taxes and import duties).
True. Indeed, I'd say a lot of car owners here in Taipei already see it largely as a status symbol, but I didn't get into that because my post was already getting long. However, I think there's a generational change underway.
Thirty years ago, Taiwan was still riding the "Asian Tiger" economic high, and getting a car was a huge marker for success. But a lot has happened since then, such as the internet... but more importantly Taipei made some important investments in public transit and city planning. They now have one of the best subway systems in the world (also one of the most expensive), and with dedicated lanes and GPS tracking, the bus system has become even more convenient and reliable. For people who came of age in the last 10 or 15 years, I think the idea of car ownership has moved down a few rungs on the ladder of priorities.
I could be wrong of course, but even in the West, with the advent of self-driving cars and ride-sharing apps, the rate of car ownership is already starting to decline.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
In a big city with excellent public transit, there's really no need for a car.
What's "excellent public transit"? Is it better than once an hour, nothing at night, nothing at all on 58 days of the year, and nothing at all on Saturdays in outlying areas (source)?
Turns out that policies to limit population growth are pretty unpopular, and if you even suggest them you are "Literally Hitler", which is why it will never happen unless you are Communist China.
Well it is pretty hard for a democratic society to legislate for people to die, and harder to legislate for one-child policies.
Same deal with banning the sending of food aid to needy people - after all - once poor people have been allowed to live, they'll only breed more of themselves and create more of the conditions for entrenched poverty.
The best method governments had for reducing population was to leave smoking laws in place, not force people to wear bicycle helmets and seatbelts etc, leave dangerous playground equipment intact, take away many operational health and safety regulations etc.
We cotton-wool wrap ourselves so well these days.
READY.
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