Efficient land transport crucial to economy: minister

business-times.asia1.com.sg :

Some $207 billion of domestic goods were transported from Singapore's industrial hubs to its airports, sea ports and customs checkpoints for export last year. So a land transport system that provides efficient links to these export exits is crucial to the economy, Transport Minister Raymond Lim said. More than eight million trips are made every day over road and rail links between residential, employment, education and recreational centres.

About 12% of Singapore's land is used for transport - the same as for industry - and almost 15% for housing. Singapore has 780,000 vehicles. So keeping traffic flowing smoothly remains a fundamental objective, Mr Lim said. 'In the past 15 years, our vehicle population grew at 2.3% per annum, while roads, measured in lane-km, grew at 1% per annum. In the next 15 years, we expect annual road growth to be halved. As our road-building programme enters maturity, the choices that we are faced with are not difficult to imagine. What level of congestion can we tolerate?'

For a dense urban city-state like Singapore, it would be catastrophic to allow private transport to be the dominant transport mode, he said. So the decline of public transport's share of overall trips will have to be reversed and eventually raised. Making public transport the mode of choice will be the first of the three priorities the new land transport road map will focus on.

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