[SINGAPORE] Motorists will soon have to pay more for a hassle-free drive on the roads as the government rolls out electronic road pricing (ERP) changes from July onwards and adds new gantries in phases to reduce the number of cars on the roads.

But new capacity on public and premium transport services will be added by June ahead of these changes to provide an attractive alternative to motorists.
This forms the third thrust of the Land Transport Review unveiled by Transport Minister Raymond Lim yesterday, after major changes to improve bus and rail services were announced over the past two weeks.

These changes come at a time when congestion levels have risen by about 25 per cent since 1999, with more roads being congested during the peak hours. The problem is compounded by the intensive use of cars here - with the increase in car trips more than doubled the growth in the car population.

Singapore's growing traffic problems will not be solved soon, Mr Lim said. "The surging economy could feel the crunch."

With past ERP rate hikes seen as providing only temporary respite, the government is raising the ERP base charge from the current $1 to $2 and the incremental charges from $0.50 to $1.

Last year, there were 25 ERP rate changes, compared to nine in 2006. With a larger jump in ERP charges, the government can refrain from frequent rate adjustments, Mr Lim said.

He assured that the impact on inflation is likely to be small, given that vehicle operating costs make up a small component of the consumer price index (CPI).

To enhance the ERP system, the LTA is changing the way it measures traffic speeds, from the arithmetic mean method to an 85th percentile method, which is an international practice. This ensures at least 85 per cent of the motorists travel at or above the optimum threshold speeds.

"We are raising the performance bar to ensure that motorists are getting better driving experience, to give them the buffer so that less motorists will fall into start-stop conditions," Mr Lim said.

The new criteria will be applied first to the CBD and Orchard Cordon (on weekdays) and Orchard and Marina Centre Cordon (on Saturdays) in July before being extended progressively to other roads.

The LTA will be rolling out a total of 16 new gantries in phases, including the five existing gantries that have not been activated.

They are located at Upper Bukit Timah Road, Toa Payoh Lorong 6, Upper Boon Keng Road, Geylang Bahru Road and Kallang Bahru Road and will commence operating come April 7 in the morning peak hours.

To address congestion in the city area, the LTA will also introduce five new gantries to run roughly along the Singapore River from Clemenceau Avenue to Fullerton Road to discourage through-traffic that makes up about 38 per cent of the traffic.

These five new gantries will begin operating on July 7 during evening peak hours on weekdays. Two of them - at Eu Tong Seng Street and Fullerton Road - will also operate on Saturdays, from 10 am to 8pm.

Six other new gantries outside the city area will begin operating in November.

Three gantries will be on arterial roads - Commonwealth Avenue, Jalan Bukit Merah and Alexandra Road - and two will be on the AYE (westbound) near Alexandra Road and along PIE (westbound) near Eunos. All five will operate in the morning.

A new gantry on Serangoon Road will operate in the evening.

These changes to the ERP system are expected to raise ERP revenue by $70 million a year.

Stressing that ERP is not a measure to raise revenue but to address congestion, the government said that it would more than offset this increase with a permanent 15 per cent reduction in road tax for all vehicles from July onwards. This will cost the government $110 million annually.

The upfront cost of car ownership will also be cut by lowering additional registration fee (ARF) for vehicles from 110 per cent to 100 per cent of the Open Market Value (OMV), which means the government would collect about $200 million less annually. An estimated 6,000 car trips of the total 3.3 million per day are likely to be displaced by the ERP measures.

To facilitate the transfer from private to public transport, the government is increasing the frequencies of all bus services along affected corridors and allowing bus services to ply along sections of the North-South and East-West lines where there is more crowding.

Premium bus services will be expanded from the current 42 services to at least 72 by June, especially along affected routes.

An additional 93 train trips per week will run during the morning and evening periods from February onwards.

LTA said that it would continue to improve roads across Singapore. The new 21 km North South Expressway (NSE), which costs $7-8 billion, will be ready by 2020 and is expected to reduce travelling time along the North-South corridor by 30 per cent during the morning peak hours.

To rein in the growth of car numbers, LTA is lowering the growth quota from the current 3 per cent to 1.5 per cent for the next three years starting from quota year 2009. This will not translate into a proportionate reduction of the Certificate of Entitlement quota as the bulk of COEs in any year is made up of replacement COEs. Only 19 per cent of the 125,000 COEs in QY2007 accounted for the 3 per cent growth.

Industry players said that they welcome the government's move to cut road tax. Both ComfortDelGro and SMRT announced yesterday that they would pass on the cost savings to their taxi drivers in full.

The impact on inflation is likely to be small, given that vehicle operating costs make up a small component of the consumer price index.