[sustran] SUSTRANS - Intro

[C. WAINGOLD]

Hi,

My name is Charles Waingold and I am studying for an
MSc  at the Institute of Transport Studies, University of 
Leeds, United Kingdom.   Prior to this was a Civil(Transport) Engineer 
in Singapore.  

I was interested to hear about Singapore's plans to introduce car sharing in
an attempt to alleviate middle class frustration at not being able to own a
car.

It will be interesting to see whether the car sharing scheme takes off given
that car ownership in Singers has attached to it a considerable amount of
status given the quota system and >200% sales tax on cars and hence it is only a 
luxury for the very rich. I understand that Mercedes is one of the top three selling
car brands there.  Whether people will be willing to share or participate in 
a car club to share their prized possesion will be interesting to see and I would 
suggest that people's view of their car would be very different to cities where car 
sharing schemes have worked.  Does anyone know how it is being marketed? 

These measures along with the road pricing scheme in the inner city area and 
the building of a mass rapid transit system has resulted in the number of 
cars entering the city area in 1995 being 15% less than the total entering in 
1977.   As Singapore's public transport is fantastic and for many I believe that a car 
is an unnecessary luxury. Singapore has also shown some innovation in 
segmenting the local travel market such as the running of high class (Mercedes) 
public mini buses to serve the well to do to discourage car use.

Of course, it must be pointed out that Singapore is a very unique country and 
that many of these measures are more difficult to implement elsewhere 
in Asia/ developing countries!


As previously highlighted, many cities in Sth East Asia were not  built for the car.
In some Asian cities,  up to 70% of access to residencies, sometimes entailing 
a whole neighbourhood, are not able to accomodate the car because  it is 
simply not wide enough. There is a tremendous diversity  of modes available 
which could be encouraged.  

There is also a vast difference between the sizes of the largest and second largest
 cities in many developing countries and it has been shown that travel demands 
increase the larger the city size hence the congestion associated with Bangkok, 
Manila, KL etc.  A few countries are taking the extreme measures of building 
new government administrative capital cities (Malaysia, Japan, Nigeria) and 
Singapore has reconstructed itself with cars and buses in mind. 

I would be interested to hear of any innovative views and solutions as to 
how to solve these transport issues - especially from Asia, South America and 
Africa.

Keep the emails rolling, Cheers.