[sustran] SUSTRANS - Intro
C. WAINGOLD
tra6cw at WEST-01.NOVELL.LEEDS.AC.UK
Wed May 14 20:58:45 JST 1997
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.
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