Transport plans

With the coronavirus pandemic reducing traffic on the roads and changing commuting patterns, certain under-used road lanes can be converted to cycling and bus lanes, said Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung yesterday.

There may also be scope to pedestrianise certain roads, said Mr Ong, as he set out his ministry’s plans following the President’s Address.

“The lower traffic and new travel patterns brought about by Covid-19 have opened a window of opportunity to re-imagine our road infrastructure,” he said as he sketched out the possibilities.

Other cities abroad, including Athens in Greece, have moved to reclaim road space for pedestrians and cyclists, as the pandemic alters commuting habits.

The minister also noted that Covid-19 has led to increased adoption of telecommuting and staggered working hours.

“This has led to more sustainable travel patterns. We will explore ways to make some of these changes permanent,” he added.

An empty Shenton Way during the Circuit Breaker. Credit: The Straits Times.

Sounds promising, and I’m pleased. After all, I’ve been calling for the conversion of road lanes into cycling and full-day bus lanes, and the pedestrianisation of entire neighbourhoods in the Central Area north and south of the Singapore River - suggestions sketched out in my book Jalan Singapura.

That said, Singapore has only emerged from the Circuit Breaker for three months, and many people are trying to resume their pre-pandemic routines, in order to claw back a semblance of normality. Some companies have reverted to getting their staff to come to the office for work. Within the first week of Singapore exiting the Circuit Breaker in early June, public transport ridership had doubled as compared to during the Circuit Breaker (even though the figure was still 36 per cent of pre-Circuit Breaker ridership). I’m sure ridership has risen even further from then until now. The same will apply to private transport and road usage. Will travel patterns eventually revert to pre-pandemic times, or will there be a new normal? Perhaps we’ll have a better idea in another three months or so.

Of course, the authorities could strike while the iron is hot, right now, when travel patterns have not fully reverted to pre-pandemic times, to make permanent adjustments to transport systems and roads. But I doubt this is possible, as such top-down changes involving ministries and statutory boards take time - lots of it.

The Government will also carry out its plan to expand the cycling path network from 460km now to 1,320km by 2030.

Mr Ong said these initiatives will help Singapore in its goal to become a car-lite nation, along with other measures such as a zero vehicle growth rate and phasing out private vehicles with internal combustion engines by 2040.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, going “car-lite” has to be executed with a significant whittling-down of the motor vehicular population in Singapore. Zero vehicle growth is good, but a reduction of the vehicle population will be far better.

He also outlined other plans for land transport as well as the aviation and maritime sectors.

For land transport, he said Singapore will continue to work towards the vision of a city where 90 per cent of peak-hour journeys can be completed within 45 minutes. Within towns, residents should be able to reach their nearest neighbourhood centre in 20 minutes.

These targets have been outlined before, and they remain lofty ones. The tough nut to crack is something that connects both targets - the feeder bus system, which serves all major HDB towns.

Tower Transit Bus Service 941, a feeder bus service for Bukit Batok town. Credit: Land Transport Guru.

I’ve taken feeder buses before, and they can be a royal pain during the peak period. Imagine living in a town such as Jurong, Yishun, or Tampines, and having to take a feeder bus to the MRT station, and then the train to an office in the Central Business District. Walking from home to the bus stop, waiting for the feeder bus, taking the journey on the bus to the nearest MRT station, walking from the bus stop or interchange to the MRT station, waiting for the train - all these take time, sometimes more than 20 minutes, and they’re only the first stage of the journey, the second stage being the train ride to the city. And if the target of reaching the neighbourhood centre in 20 minutes is not reached, then the target of completing a peak-hour journey in 45 minutes could be in jeopardy.

Complicating the feeder bus system problem is the fact that no two towns are exactly the same in terms of road system and population spread. Hence, optimising travelling times for feeder buses in one town requires solutions unique to that town.

Resources will continue to be invested in the public transport system to maintain reliability, he added, while new MRT stations and lines will be opened almost every year.

The Ministry of Transport (MOT) will also work with the Public Transport Council to improve public transport to help those with mobility challenges, said Mr Ong.

He added that expanding the public transport system to better serve Singaporeans requires major infrastructure and recurrent expenditure. “But this is essential public spending, which has to be carried out with financial prudence.”

Yes. A world-class public transport system for a world-class city-state is not a want, it’s a need.

The uncertain road ahead

Credit: TODAY.

The pandemic is the first crisis for South-east Asia's decade-old start-up ecosystem from which Grab has emerged as a household name and the most valuable firm at over US$14 billion (S$19.2 billion).

Grab says its app has seen a total of 198 million downloads, although it has yet to turn profitable.

As coronavirus measures put the region of 650 million people under lockdown, Grab saw demand eroding for its transport business, but then nearly 150,000 of its drivers switched to becoming delivery men for home-bound customers…

The company, which counts Indonesia as its biggest market and is locked in a fierce competition there with Jakarta-based Gojek, is doubling down on deliveries, with its two-year-old food business overtaking the mature transport division as its biggest segment…

At the beginning of 2020, who would have foretold this?

The next chapter in Singapore transport is, like everything else in these tumultuous times, notoriously hard to predict.

Returning the pavements to pedestrians

In modern Singapore history, pedestrians have gradually seen their allotted spaces on the roads shrink. They used to be able to walk on the roads, sharing them with other 19th-century vehicles such as bullock carts, horses carriages, and rickshaws. Then from the 1970s, pavements were constructed all over the island for them. Pedestrians had to keep to them, largely for the benefit of motor vehicles such as cars and trucks. Then in the second decade of the 21st century, came the Personal Mobility Device (PMD) scourge, which saw an invasion of fast-moving vehicles on the pavements, endangering the safety of pedestrians. Common sense finally prevailed last year when the PMDs were banned from pavements, but pedestrians still have to share them with bicycles. My book Jalan Singapura details this history.

South Bridge Road around 1900. Pedestrians walked on the roads then. Credit: National Archives of Singapore.

Another view of South Bridge Road around 1900. Look at the pedestrian standing in the middle like he owned the road! Credit: National Archives of Singapore.

At the beginning of August, a code of conduct was unveiled for pedestrians, to complement existing codes of conduct for cyclists and PMD users. It was part of measures proposed last year by the Active Mobility Advisory Panel.

Among other things, pedestrians are urged to stay away, if possible, from paths they have to share with cyclists. But if they must use shared paths, then they are advised to keep left. Also, they should refrain from using mobile phones while on these paths.

It would have been good for the release of this code of conduct to be matched with a reaffirmation of existing codes of conduct for bicycles and PMDs, to remind everyone that the onus for looking out for others should always be on those riding vehicles moving at faster speeds. The concept of defensive driving - that it is the traveller’s duty to look out for others even if others are not doing the same - should be applied to them like how it applies to drivers of motor vehicles on the roads.

Ultimately, the underlying issue remains the lack of travelling spaces for bicycles and PMDs, which results in them having to jostle for valuable space with pedestrians. Hence, it’s great that plans to expand Singapore’s cycling path network are being hastened - it will double to 800km by 2023, two years ahead of schedule.

In the long term, I will still like to see bicycles and PMDs move to special lanes carved out of roads, similar to how Bencoolen Street has had one lane handed over to bicycles. This has to be executed in tandem with a whittling down of the motor vehicular population in Singapore, which will be a true fulfilment of the “car-lite” vision for the city-state. Only after this, can pavements be returned to pedestrians.

In 2017, one road lane in Bencoolen Street was converted into a bicycle lane.