COE and ERP systems are not the only solutions that are
available for the management of our limited road space, our vehicle
population and the improvement of vehicle speed.
There must be other solutions to complement these two systems to
make it more effective and less costly to car owners.
On 22 Nov, MOT Raymond Lim told Parliament that ERP charges have
been raised recently as traffic speeds on the relevant roads had
fallen below the optimal range following a regular review.
Also, COE prices have short to a record 10-year high.
What are the solutions that could be used to improve our road
and vehicle management systems?
Does the MOT realize that road-side parking is affecting vehicle
speeds on our roads? What should be done?
MOT should consider removing street-side parking to improve on
vehicle flow. More car parks should be built progressively for
off-street parking to replace road-side parking.
Singapore should remove all paid car parking lots alongside our
streets if we wish to allow a bigger car ownership when our
population reaches six million people.
More off-street car parking lots should be built underground,
above ground, below viaducts or elevated train tracks, or above the
roads and expressways. Many of the surface car parks should be put
to better use in land-scarce Singapore.
No road-side parking is allowed in many major cities. For
example, Japanese cities do not allow road-side parking, and Sydney
does not have road-side parking in the inner-city areas. They know
that road-side parking creates congestion and affects the flow of
traffic.
In land-scarce Singapore, it does not make sense to have ERPs
all over the place while on the other hand our streets have
road-side parking.
I would like to suggest that LTA and the URA set a target to
remove road-side parking in at least 50 percent of our streets
within a radius of 12 km from City Hall as soon as possible.
Ultimately, Singapore should not have any road-side parking.
Also, we could remove many of the ugly white and yellow lines
drawn on our roads when road-side parking is no longer allowed
anywhere in Singapore.
This will mean saving lots of money when we have less lines to
draw or to maintain on our streets.