By Zhen Ming

IMAGINE a nightmare day when every motorist in Singapore decides to travel at, say, 8am.

The vehicles clog up every main road and expressway bumper to bumper - such that none can move even a metre forward.

Yes, this can happen now.

By 2025, if all the projected 1.2 million motor vehicles we own by then were lined up, then they would occupy a total of 3.8 lanes of all our major roads.

That's when there'll be at least 6.5 million of us living on the island.

So, if all of us go out on the road at the same time, we'll have a mega jam.

Back in 1982 (when I first returned from America), when there were only 2.5 million of us, we were already close to gridlock with 3.2 lanes jam-packed.

Thankfully, a road expansion programme managed to keep pace with the rapid rise in car ownership in recent years, ensuring that the number of lanes occupied on a bumper-to-bumper basis was kept at 3.2 (to this day).

But this can't go on forever.

With 12 per cent of our land already allocated to roads, road expansion is slated to slow down to only 0.5 per cent yearly from 2009 onwards.

And while the vehicle population will still be allowed to grow at 1.5 per cent (that is, thrice as fast), the longer-term outlook for car ownership is definitely not too rosy.

Singapore's transport system must therefore be overhauled, yet again, if we are to soon realise our aspirations to be a thriving congestion-free global city.

A world-class global city of 6.5 million people will soon put us in a different league - not too far behind the likes of Paris (9.6 million), London (7.6 million), and Chicago (6.9 million) - but it will also mean a more crowded Singapore.

Faster than you may imagine, we will have to figure out how best to feed, shelter and move around 6.5 million people - instead of just the 4.8 million we now have.

Trust me, this target population will be hit - within the next 7-17 years - whether you think the country's population should continue to grow as fast as it did over the past three years (4.3 per cent a year, with the intake of more foreigners), or at a slower 'natural' rate (1.7 per cent a year, without new immigrants).

So, like it or not, whether it's mid-2015 (fast track) or end-2025 (natural pace), let's brace ourselves for 6.5 million of us - each with an average land area of only 109sqm (versus a more spacious 250sqm back in mid-1982).

This bigger population, in turn, calls for radical changes to vastly improve our existing land transport system, which must include enhanced measures to restrain the number of motor vehicles as well as our propensity to take them out for joyrides.

More ERPs?

With this in mind, expect Singapore motorists to face stiffer usage disincentives to ensure smooth-flowing traffic on our roads.

Expect the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system to play a more prominent role.

Expect ERP coverage to be more extensive and ERP charges to be much higher. And expect the so-called ERP II (the next generation ERP system) to soon make distance-based congestion charging possible.

That's because the Certificate of Entitlement scheme, blamed for failing to check the explosive growth in car ownership in recent years, is too dependent on the anticipated number of vehicles to be scrapped - a less-than-accurate forecast that requires fine-tuning.

Futile

Even with the lowering of our vehicle population growth rate to 1.5 per cent a year (from the present 3 per cent), with effect from Quota Year 2009, holding back the tidal wave of cars seems, to me, akin to King Canute's futile seaside attempt.

Given our land constraint, the projected increase in travel demand must be met largely by public transport.

A single-deck bus, for instance, can transport about 80 passengers at any one time, whereas the average occupancy of our cars is only about 1.5 persons per car.

Expect, therefore, more bus services and new roads built partly or wholly built underground.

However, these roads won't come cheap. So guess where we can expect the money to come from?

• Zhen Ming, a Harvard-trained economist based in Singapore, is a freelance contributor.

*Refers to the number of lanes occupied on all major roads in Singapore if all motor vehicles in the country were lined up bumper to bumper (assuming the average vehicle length = 4.6m).

NB: Motor vehicles include cars, taxis, buses, good vehicles motorcycles and scooter, while major roads include all expressways, major arterial roads and collector roads managed by the Land Transport Authority. They exclude local roads.

This article was first published in The New Paper on Nov 15, 2008.