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At 6 a.m.
one weekday morning, 64-year-old taxi driver Koh Chia Hock set out
to ply Singapore’s roads when it started raining. So he turned
around and went home.
“If I go
and fetch a customer, it’s very risky,” said Koh, as the heavy
traffic raises the chance of an accident that could leave him
without earnings while the car is repaired. “I don’t have the
stomach for it. I don’t want to drive when it rains.”
Cab drivers
like Koh are avoiding the traffic jams that have become a hallmark
of Singapore’s tropical rainstorms after a jump in the city’s
population and a surge in vehicles clogged roads. As the government
shuts the center of the city this weekend for the annual Formula
One street race, residents are bracing for even more
delays.
“This is a
problem that has been accumulated over many years — infrastructure
investment has not kept pace with the demand,” said Irvin Seah, a
senior economist at DBS Group Holdings in Singapore who was part of
the nation’s economic review committee in the early 2000s. “With
the congestion, time will be lost in traffic jams and that’s
essentially money.”
Singapore’s
roads are trying to cope with a population that has jumped by more
than 1.1 million since mid-2004 to 5.3 million. Taxi waiting times
of an hour or more are tarnishing the city-state’s reputation for
efficiency as the government works to turn the island into a
regional center for industries such as biotechnology and wealth
management.
The 1996
transport system white paper planned for a population of 4 million
by 2030. A government report this year said the number of people on
the island that’s less than a third of the size of Luxembourg may
grow to 6.9 million by then.
Building
railways
Singapore
closed roads on Wednesday in the city center for six days for the
Formula One night race and related activities, according to the
Land Transport Authority. The closures add to the congestion
downtown, said Song Seng Wun, an economist at CIMB Group Holdings
in Singapore.
“It is an
annual inconvenience,” said Song.
Singapore
is spending S$60 billion ($48 billion) on new subway lines and at
least another S$12 billion on buses and highways to try to rein in
the congestion and allow for future growth. While those projects
will roll out over the next 17 years, overcrowding and delays are
beginning to affect the image of a city often considered a model in
the world.
Singapore’s
place on the IMD World Competitiveness Ranking has fallen to fifth
in 2013 since topping the list in 2010, as its marks for basic
infrastructure and business productivity and efficiency fell.
Singapore ranked below Kuala Lumpur and New Delhi in a survey of
commuters’ experience based on speed, cost of travel and overall
comfort, released in 2011 by Frost & Sullivan.
More
railways
“New rail
lines typically require a long lead time,” said Transport Minister
Lui Tuck Yew in e-mailed answers to questions. “As a result, we are
experiencing overcrowding at the moment in our public transport
network.”
To try to
curb the increase in traffic, the government has cut the growth in
licenses for new cars to 0.5 percent, from 3 percent annually
between 1990 and 2008. The number of licensed vehicles on the roads
increased 35 percent from 2001 to 2011.
Simon Yeo,
a business development consultant, now wakes up at 6 a.m., two
hours earlier than he used to, in order to beat the traffic on his
21-kilometer commute.
“I lose a
lot of sleep, but I still don’t feel as tired in terms of how
strenuous it is getting stuck in major traffic,” said Yeo,
32.
A
view from Swissotel The Stamford shows the track for the upcoming
Formula One Singapore Grand Prix night race in Singapore on Sept.
16, 2013. (AFP Photo/Roslan Rahman)
Congestion
cost
Road
congestion costs Asian economies an estimated 2 percent to 5
percent of gross domestic product a year due to lost time and
higher transport costs, according to the Asian Development Bank’s
website.
“There are
too many cars,” said taxi driver Koh, who says it takes twice as
long to get to the city center than when he started driving cabs a
decade ago. “It’s not that there are too few taxis, it’s just that
if they are not occupied, they are caught in jams.”
“Reputational damage
will come when it seeps into the minds of visitors, that they see
better infrastructure elsewhere and they don’t see the same in
Singapore,” said Wai Ho Leong, a Singapore-based economist at
Barclays who helped analyze the city’s tourism projects when he
worked at the Ministry of Trade and Industry. “I think it’s slowly
seeping in.”
That’s the
case for Hong Kong-based Tsang Hin Cheng, a senior executive at a
US bank who visits Singapore once a month.
‘Diabolical’
situation
“I love
Singapore, but there’s always that hour you waste trying to get a
taxi,” said Tsang, who has been coming to the city-state for 10
years. “It’s diabolical how bad the taxi situation is in Singapore.
Remind me never to move here.”
The
government’s Land Transport Authority says the average waiting time
for a taxi in the city center during peak hours in March was 4.1
minutes and average traffic speed in the central business district
in 2012 was 28.6 kilometers per hour.
Paul
Barter, an adjunct professor of urban transport policy at the Lee
Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore who has advised city
governments in China, Indonesia and Columbia on transport policy,
says the figures don’t tell the real picture.
“Averages
are very misleading,” said Barter, who has lived in the city-state
for 12 years. “Things are not quite as bad as some people have been
saying, they’re not quite as rosy as the government has been
saying.”
ComfortDelGro Corp,
Singapore’s biggest cab operator, estimates that almost 95 percent
of its 16,300 fleet is in service during wet weather, the company
said in an e-mail. Many taxis are caught in traffic jams when it
rains, it said. The island has about 137 rain days a year,
according to government data.
The figures
are little consolation for office workers waiting hours to get a
taxi.
“If it
rains, I never get a cab,” said Nitin Damodaran, a private banker
based in the city’s central business district. “Try getting a cab
on Friday evenings. It’s impossible. I don’t know where all the
cabs disappear to.”
