When everybody owns a car
Making the case for significant reform of the COE system, especially with new tools.
Recent six-digit COE prices have become quite a political issue for the PAP. And with the ongoing leadership transition and a general election likely on the horizon, the current Transport Ministry appears to be playing the populist card, and this is no exception.
Of course, I’ve reached a point where I believe vehicle quotas and the COE system now do more harm than good. Not only do restrictions on car ownership mean we place overly heavy expectations on public transport when people outbidded by COE quotas grudgingly abandon their car-owning fantasies and use public transport, our car-centric infrastructure decisions also effectively mean we devote more space to a minority of car users.
Yet, it may be an uphill battle to reuse that space, because car owners have paid their fair share for the land. While MRT infrastructure may be very expensive, but if land is money, cleverly designed stations actually save land. You can’t say the same for highways and stroads, despite the authorities’ best efforts to construct grade-separated pedestrian networks.
It might sound quite counterproductive, but liberalizing vehicle quotas and letting more people experience driving in Singapore for themselves, can smash whatever illusions about it they may have, and help push people into choosing to use public transport and active mobility instead, complementing existing policies.
Do as I say, not as I do
MOT’s solution to the political crisis of COE pricing for now is something they call “cut and fill” — to borrow COE supply from “peak years” later this decade to years with lesser expected deregistrations — namely, 2022 and 2023. When supply is “expected” to increase from the second half of this year onwards due to more vehicle deregistrations, some of this will not be returned. What I suspect a “one off increase” may look like is simply to wipe away the debt, essentially making what should be a short-term bump in car population, permanent.
I feel that the best advertisement for going car-lite is, paradoxically, more cars. When it takes an hour by car for a family in Punggol to bring Kay-en to piano class at United Square and then another hour for Jayden to get to football practice at the Sports Hub because of congestion, everything changes. You find a way to pack 2 kids’ worth of milk powder and spare diapers into a pram that fits comfortably on public transport — because that has become the superior alternative to being stuck in jams, where you can’t access your car boot while stuck on the CTE anyway. As it is, there’s plenty of complains about road jams in the northeast, despite the continuous attempts at building relief roads out of Sengkang and Punggol.
That is not to say the government should stop efforts like Friendly Streets, or pedestrianization and lane reclamation of CBD arterials — in fact, it should continue, and it can be more radical, like allowing PMDs and cyclists on 30kph-limit Silver Zones. This is a situation we want to deliberately inflame, as more cars fight for lesser road space. Similarly, while it may increase car ownership, we want to target car use now — parents cite road safety as an excuse for not letting their kids take public transport to school. When we have better, safer roads, there’s less of a reason to drive your kids to school.
In fact, the car population is already expanding, but in the past few years, it has not caught up with the amount of roads we’ve built. Consequently, when there are lesser cars per lane-km of roads, the roads may feel less congested, even if the math says only slightly. The perception that roads are emptier may give people more freedom to speed, and high COE prices the reason to be an asshole — after all, it’s Certificate of Entitlement.
Or if the government has no interest in outright abolishing COE, it should at least add growth in road lane-km as a component of calculating quotas. Expansion of the MRT network can also be counted, with MRT service now in upper class enclaves like Katong, Bukit Timah, Upper Changi, and coming to Serangoon North; and supposedly there are car owners that choose not to drive on a given day and use public transport instead — and in any case, our messaging around rail expansion is still targeting car owners.
After all, from a Zaobao survey of car owners within the TEL4 area, a majority of 55 car owners surveyed still plan to keep their car even if they use public transport more. Some might argue that this makes the COE system more unfair, as cars that take up valuable quota are bought and left in carparks. So why not increase the quota? If we want to target usage, making cars easier to own, but harder to use, should be the way to go.
The romantics
It doesn’t just have to be cars.
Stories about PMD abuse are rife in the newspapers, and there are also many tales where whole families try to squeeze aboard a single PMD or even two, that then tear down the roads at high speeds. From these stories, it should be clear that PMDs are being used in a way that defeats the point of having a Category D COE for motorbikes, as using a PMD in unintended ways is a cheap workaround to paying for motorbike COE.
Don’t forget motorbikes are also targets of electrification, if we’re to eliminate the internal combustion engine from our roads. Electric motorbikes would basically be almost no different from a PMD, even if on the books, there is the sole difference being that it’s road worthy and capable of higher speeds. Albeit illegal modifications to PMDs to pass the 30kph path limit basically make them undistinguishable. Of course, there’s a case for democratizing access to roads and erasing this distinction, but that’s beside the key point here.
A simple solution where a PMD registration fee equivalent to half the Prevailing Quota Premium for Category D must be paid could work, with PMA users with medical reasons exempted, but subjected to the PMA rules of 6kph maximum speed. But that may not be enough. It ultimately comes down to dreams and desires about personal vehicle ownership, and any effort to really go car-lite must address these, instead of the political costs of modifying the public transport system. Even in Guangzhou, you will find people using electric wheelchairs instead of walking.
Or Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, or Jakarta, where motorbikes are very necessary to get around car jams. Taipei even has dedicated motorcycle infrastructure! In Singapore we can even see some spillover from Malaysian motorbike culture, where cross-border workers from Johor take their motorbikes into Singapore to work — go to Jurong or Tuas in peak periods and/or shift change timings and it’s common to see platoons of motorbikes heading to/from the checkpoints.
Similarly, the less elderly purchasing PMAs when they should be keeping active is also enough of a sign of concern for them to want to start regulating PMAs — with proposed new rules requiring certification of needing mobility assistance to buy a PMA. Perhaps the Transport Ministry could work with the Health Ministry and People’s Association to refer former PMA users who don’t qualify under the new rules, to join their nearest CC’s brisk walking club. The health benefits may even help reverse the fraility that caused these old folks to want to use a PMA in the first place.
Of course, some might argue why I said it was unfair to “subsidize a lifestyle”. A parallel can be seen in healthcare, where the government gives people incentives to keep fit. This is done by providing sports facilities, compulsory labelling laws for food and drinks, and subsidizing healthier alternatives to foods high in salt and sugar. That’s simply because providing healthcare for the chronically unhealthy by virtue of their lifestyle choices, costs far more for the nation, than disincentivising that behavior in the first place.
Even Malaysia is doing the same. The Anwar government is spending plenty of political capital on reducing blanket subsidies on fuel, saying that the money is better off spent on those who actually need the fuel, like farmers. It’s clear the harm these subsidies have caused. Of course, Malaysia has its own fair share of car-centric planning. But under these subsidies, Singaporeans aren’t the only ones pumping cheap petrol in Johor — Thais, too, come from across the northern border to pump Malaysian government-subsidized fuel in the northern border states. And it’s helped, in going car-lite too, with more expensive fuel resulting in lesser vehicle use.
Overall, I think it’s a lifestyle people can imagine themselves leading. But is this a lifestyle we should?
Big Brother is watching
The uproar over ERP2.0 better be worth it. I don’t suppose it will be done before a general election, but distance-based charging is presumably coming sooner than later.
The issue is that for now, it has been viewed as a new way to do an old thing, where futureproofing is fine as long as it doesn’t get in the way. Stored value cards are still required in order to access carparks. This is likely why the LTA has focused more on helping users set up auto top up and giving out free NETS Motoring Cards instead of advocating for the use of backend payment to settle ERP payments on the OBU. But that will only go so far when carpark bills reach into the tens of dollars, especially at places like Marina Bay Sands, limiting its utility even if people are willing to carry and manage two cards.
Fortunately, the LTA has the ability to implement additional features without a return trip to the workshop. They did it with the temporary card blocking for EPS carparks, and display of expected travel times and parking availability. They will do it with the OBU displaying warnings about speed limits, bus lanes, and silver zones.
If anything, the situation with cars is also quite similar to what we see with public transport — too many stakeholders, which are too difficult to pull along when it’s necessary to modernize systems. Of course, the LTA could work with NETS to force a compulsory modernization exercise on carpark operators, where some deadline could be set to accept backend payment systems or even bank cards.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of this arrangement. Perhaps what can be done is to use the OBU also as a GPS-enabled speed warning device for all vehicles; expanding the regime from heavy vehicles which already must have speed warning devices and speed limiters. This will improve road safety. The Traffic Police can also even consider requiring serial speedsters to agree to let TP access GPS location data generated by the OBU, to ensure that they comply with traffic laws regarding speeding.
Malaysia is also going through a similar transition — phasing out the Cashcard-like SmartTag system in favour of RFID detection and backend payment. Singapore drivers are being forced to configure their Touch n Go Wallets, as Singapore vehicles must be RFID tagged as part of the VEP system — and this time, Minister Loke is serious about it. But the OBU provides other alternatives. Perhaps Singapore vehicles could even have the OBU be made MyRFID compliant, avoiding the need for Malaysia to supply RFID tags to Singapore cars.
But whatever has been done, ultimately the OBU is very much necessary for the future, and all these bells and whistles are aside from the real selling point.
A man chooses
In short, I view changing how we pay for road usage as a prerequisite to full distance-based charging, and full distance-based charging is a powerful tool in balancing the aspirations of a car-lite society versus desires of personal convenience.
This could be one of the reasons why the LTA feels it may not be ready for distance-based road charging; if it has not succeeded in changing habits. What if someone’s card runs out of money? With the Malaysian system, a failed toll payment means the barriers just remain closed. The system may be nice enough to tell you that you have no money in the TnG Wallet and you can run off to the office to do a top up. But Singapore’s ERP gantries don’t have toll barriers; in fact with ERP2.0 there doesn’t need to be anything at all but a sign.
We also already know who heavy road users like taxi/private hire drivers and delivery drivers are — the first through licenses they hold, and the second would be Category C anyway. Light goods vehicles can be given some relief under ERP2.0, unlike the status quo where they’re treated the same as personal cars and pay the personal car rate.
There may also be some leakage with taxis and private hire cars being used for private purposes, so perhaps this could function on a rebate system instead — based on whether they are passenger-carrying, or being used for private purposes without a platform booking or the taxi meter running. With big data, the LTA is well equipped to undertake such monitoring; in fact it might even help improve taxi and PHV supply, as the LTA can play with road charges and increase driver income more, augmenting the current surcharge-based method.
Despite this being Singapore, it’s still possible to live a car-centric lifestyle, especially for professionals who need to travel. The usage-based regime must thus be as sufficiently punitive to road users as the COE system used to be, if not more. While things like Additional Registration Fee and road taxes can be significantly increased to make up for the loss of COE income and perhaps lesser fuel tax income from more electric vehicles, we’ll also need to see if it can produce the same congestion relief measures.
This can also fill the hole in fuel tax revenue from those who pump petrol in Malaysia — it won’t matter how cheap Malaysian fuel is, when the Singapore Government gets its pound of flesh through distance-based charging. Maybe the 3/4 tank rule can also be repealed, once the government has an alternative to fuel taxes.
The US state of Oregon, for example, has a flat distance-based mileage tax of 2 US cents per mile. But we may not want to do this. We may want people to drive less inside the CBD cordon, and perhaps driving inside the CBD/Orchard cordons or along known congested roads at a given time belt may be priced at a different rate than driving outside. Distance-based tolling also gives us the opportunity to end the infamous phenomenon of people slowing down just before they approach an ERP gantry at the ends of time periods, so that they can cross just after the time period switches over and get charged the lower fare instead.
And the next question: how do you also fairly treat those who paid for a six-digit Category A COE? Of course, you could just give everyone COE rebates, but that means a short-term charge to the government pocketbook — not forgetting that drastic reforms to the COE system can affect other parts of government coffers too, with MOT expected to collect nearly $5 billion from transport-related fees and charges in FY2024. So what should “higher usage based charges” look like? Charging an additional $12 per day — over and above current ERP rates — could easily amount to half the cost of a COE these days over 10 years.
Tough questions lie ahead
All in all, we will soon have an opportunity to overhaul road transport management— shifting away from ownership restrictions forcing people to use public transport, to placing an emphasis on choices and taxing usage. Yes, that means more people can buy cars. Considering their position in society, such a policy move will very likely result in more people buying cars. It may appear at first glance to be against the idea of a car-lite society.
Then policymakers should answer a question with a question: You can buy a car, but should you really use it that much? When people have to pay for what they use, instead of the COE system reinforcing sunk cost fallacies, where people pay anyway whether they drive the car or leave it in the carpark, they might be forced to reconsider their car-using habits.
Ultimately, policy should shape infrastructure. Right now, it doesn’t look like it. But policymakers should very well make use of the infrastructure they’ve built. Would COE even still have a place, then?
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