TO reduce the car population here, the number of Certificate of Entitlement (COE) to buy vehicles will cut from 4 per cent to 1.5 per cent a year from 2009.

But this will not halve the number of COEs available, as most of the certificates are to replace deregistered cars.

Using last year as an example, the cut will result in 9.5 per cent fewer COEs.

There are now 850,000 vehicles on the roads today. In the last 10 years, the number of cars grew by almost 40 per cent, from 370,000 in 1997 to 515,000 today, each chalking up an average of 21,000 km a year.

Transport Minister Raymond Lim said the car growth rate will be reviewed after three years to assess if a further reduction is necessary.

Speaking during a visit to the Kallang-Paya Lebar Expressway on Wednesday morning, he said: "When I go to dialogue sessions, I often get questions like 'Don't you think there are too many cars on the roads?'???People tell me that it is not just the city areas that are getting congested but also suburban areas like Serangoon and Thomson, which they say get chock-a-block full of cars in the evenings.'

'One of the reasons for this increasing congestion is that in applying a 3 per cent growth rate to the current vehicle population base, we have been adding 25,000 vehicles onto the roads each year, compared to 16,000 vehicles back in 1990 when the Vehicle Quota System was introduced.'

'If we continue at a 3 per cent growth rate, we would have enough vehicles, packed bumper to bumper, to turn our entire road network into a giant car park in the not too distant future.'

'If we take into account that road growth will go down to 0.5 per cent a year, then clearly, the 3 per cent vehicle growth rate is no longer tenable.'