Number of car owners will soon reduce in Singapore as the authorities have decided to freeze the number of vehicles on the roads from February, 2018. The Land Transport Authority said that due to scarcity of land and upgradations in the public transport, such a decision has been taken.
Singapore is a densely populated country as has laid down some strict policies which focuses on reducing the number of cars on the roads. The car ownership rates in Singapore are relatively lower compared to other wealthy countries. Apart from the existing rules, Singapore has a policy of increasing the cost of owning a car in an effort to reduce the number of vehicles on the road.
The authorities have put in place a system where the car users bid for the right to own and use a vehicle for a limited number of years. The system is known as the Certificate of Entitlement. This means that a mid-range car in Singapore can be priced by four times as much as it would cost in the United States. The Land Transport Authority said that the new cap will not affect the number of available Certificates if Entitlement as most of them are not newly created and some of them come from the deregistered cars.
The cap applies to the motorcycles and private cars and does not include goods vehicles and buses. However, despite the policies laid down by the government there are about one million vehicles running on the roads of Singapore. There are more than 600,000 private and rental cars including the cars which are used by ride hailing services like Grab and Uber. Apart from a cap on the vehicle growth, the government of Singapore is also trying to deal with the congestion by investing more on public transport. 41 new train stations have been added in the past six years and has expanded the network by 30%.
Photo Credits: Straightstimes
