A PANEL of international transport advisers has been appointed to help the Land Transport Authority (LTA) with its policies and strategies, and to keep it updated on global transport trends.

The six-member International Advisory Panel (IAP) has internationally recognised transport experts from Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, the United States and Britain.

Its first three-day meeting, which ended on Wednesday, was chaired by Transport Minister Raymond Lim. It focused on the ongoing Land Transport Review covering transport challenges in the next 10 to 15 years.

"This first IAP meeting is an important part of the Land Transport Review", Mr Lim said. "The inputs from the members will go towards shaping the key ideas for Singapore's next phase of land transport development".

Agreeing, LTA chief executive Yam Ah Mee said IAP members were "generous in sharing their experiences and innovative ideas on the various transport issues we are considering for the future". He said the LTA would study their recommendations further as part of its land transport review.

Already, the education and biomedical sciences sectors here have their own international advisory panels to similarly provide advice on charting directions for the respective sectors.

When it comes to public transport reform, Professor David Hensher, director of the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies at the University of Sydney, said it "must be accompanied by greater recovery for society of the costs that motorists impose on the system".

Of Singapore's public transport challenges ahead, Mr Hans Rat, secretary general of the International Association of Public Transport, who is based in Belgium, said: "More Singaporeans will be travelling in the future and their journeys will be more frequent. So new transport systems, new transport policies, new technologies and behaviour need to be introduced."

Some challenges facing the LTA are how to get more people to take public transport and how to ease traffic congestion on the expressways.

One of the issues is long waiting times and overcrowded buses. Another is how to integrate bus and train routes so that public transport is made more convenient for commuters.

From April to June, six sessions of discussions were held with groups of commuters and public transport operators.

Professor Tony Ridley, Emeritus Professor of Transport Engineering at London's Imperial College, said Singapore "now faces severe challenges because of increasing population, affluence and accessibility needs within the constraints of a small island country".

But Professor Shigeru Morichi, president of the Institute for Transport Policy Studies in Japan, noted Singapore's strength in coordination between transport and land-use strategy, between car ownership policy and public transport policy and between the MRT, LRT and the bus system.

"For better efficiency of public transport operators, the introduction of more competition within the industry might be useful," he said.