By Jake Chng

THE proportion of people here taking public transport declined over the past four years, continuing a trend first noticed in 2004, a Land Transport Authority (LTA) survey found.

The survey, which polled 10,500 households from July last year to March this year, found that the proportion of people who took public transport daily fell from 54 per cent in 2004 to 51 per cent in the nine months up to March.

It also revealed a drop in the proportion of those taking public transport during the morning peak hours, from 63 per cent in 2004, to 59 per cent this year.

The drops are because no major improvements were made to public-transport infrastructure in the last four years, and more people had turned to using private vehicles, the LTA said.

The proportion of people using private transport daily rose from 38 per cent in 2004, to 39 per cent this year.

Nanyang Technological University undergraduate Katrina Khoe, 19, stopped using public transport two months ago after getting a car.

"It's much more convenient. I can go anywhere I want in the car in a short period of time. With public transport, it takes much longer," she said.

To encourage more people to use public transport, the LTA will be improving the land-transport system through initiatives launched last year under the Land Transport Masterplan.

They include increasing bus lanes in June last year to allow buses to travel smoothly even in heavy traffic, and doubling the rail network from 138km now to 278km by 2020.

Under the masterplan, the LTA will also restrict the growth in the number of vehicles here. From May this year, it halved the annual vehicle growth rate from 3 per cent to 1.5 per cent.

It aims to have 70 per cent of the population taking public transport during the morning peak hours by 2020.

By that year, there will be an MRT station within five minutes' walk of any location in the city area, said Minister for Transport and Second Minister for Foreign Affairs Raymond Lim, who announced the survey results yesterday during an international transport conference, the 2nd World Roads Conference.

The LTA hopes that this will encourage more people to take public transport, because its survey showed that those who live near MRT stations are more likely to do so.

The survey also showed an increase in the total number of trips made here, from 8.9 million journeys in 2004 to 11 million this year.

This was due to the growth in the total population here, at about 2 per cent per year for the last four years, the LTA said.

chngjm@sph.com.sg

For more my paper stories click here.