Singapore’s war on wheels

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33959, 27 September 1975, Page 12

Singapore’s war on wheels

By

Dennis Bloodworth

Singapore has a unique plan for dealing with the automobile explosion. It consists, basically, of bludgeoning the compulsive carowner out of his maniacal attachment to his own person internal combustion engine.

Returning with some relief from a destitute London loaded with freespending jean-age idlers in the sun aqd jostling queues of status-symbol limousines, I forgot about this sinister scheme until I took my 1967 estate car down to the local Chinese mechanic for a face-lift.

"Respray?” he queried, falling back in some alarm. "New tyres? Look” — he kicked the particoloured paintwork with its bas-re-lief of recent rust — “that’s still good for a few months, your two rear

tyres will pass a police check — just, and in place of the others we put on the spare and I get you a cheap retread, okay? Because I don’t mind keeping this thing going for you, if you absolutely insist, but I refuse to let you run up big bills for major repairs. I isn’t worth it and you’d simply be throwing your money away again.”

He knew what he was talking about. In 1974 the Singapore Government increased vehicle registration fees by a quarter, and the import duty on cars by 45 per cent. In March 1975 the licence fees were savagely jacked up again — and then doubled for cars registered as office transport. , Even a privatelyowned Volkswagen now costs about £7O to put on the road for a vear.

I had to pay more to register my absolescent rattletrap for a further six months (nearly £4O) than I could get for it on the open market.

By the second quarter of this year the number of new cars on the streets had fallen to less than half of the equivalent figure for 1974, and during the same period the number of old cars laid up and deregistered had doubled. But taxes were only the beginning of the squeeze to cut the car-flow in Singapore, where by the spring 2750,000 vehicles were still crowding the proliferating highways on an island with fewer than 225 square miles.

In June new measures repulsive to the persistent motorist were introduced whereby anyone leaving his car for more than two hours in a restricted parking place was obliged to pay the equivalent of almost £2 for every further hour or fraction of an hour, or risk a fine of up to £2OO — for the first offence. Those who washed their cars in public car parks or at the streetside in the

central business district of Singapore city, or left them at the curb when there was a car park nearby, risked the same penalty. Ordinary parking fees in the city area were raised to nearly 20p for the first hour and 40p for the second.

By then,, however, the Government had thrown a novel punch. To relieve Singapore’s constipated streets during peak hours, drivers of all cars and taxis carrying fewer than four people into the builtup urban area between 7.30 and 9.0 on a working morning were obliged to buy themselves permits which cost 60p for a day or £l2 for a month.

Checkpoints to enforce this Area Licensing Scheme were set up on the edge of the restricted zone, car parks were opened on its fringes with shuttle bus services into the city to enable motorists arriving at the periphery to “park-and-ride” to their offices,

and special air-fonditioned coaches ferrying commuters straight from their individual dormitory housing estates to the heart of the business district for 40p a trip were also introduced to lure the waverer away from, his own wheels. i

At the outset the fringe car parks were left empty, the shuttle-buses lost nearly £6OO a day (and that was before the commuters learned to cheat the coin-box beside the driver), the dearer air-conditioned coaches carried an average of eight passengers instead of 35, the number of taxis entering the restricted

Right: A cyclist about to be engulfed in typical Singapore traffic.

urban zone during the crucial morning hours fell by nine-tenths, and the city was afflicted with busjams.

Meanwhile, the foxy motorists played tag with the police, working out alternative travel patterns and escape routes or staggering their hours and converging on the city just before or after the licensing period, thus creating new traffic tangles. Is the Government losing this war of movement against the canny, jinking, but determined road-hogs which so strikingly resembles the systematic attempts of the American army to box in — or out — the elusive Viet Cong? Hardly, judging by the fall in car sales and the pitiful price placed on my own spanking antique. The drivers may be flexible and unorthodox in their tactics, retreating here in order to advance there in accordance with the best guerrilla teachings of Chairman Mao, but in the hard-hitting administration of Singapore they are up against an enemy who is not going to let go until he has won.

— O.F.N.S. Copyright.