JOAN Moreira is a public transport convert. The fortysomething Seletar resident, who works in the financial district, has been subscribing to the Park & Ride scheme for over half a year now.

And going by the surge in rail ridership to a record 1.7 million trips a day in the first quarter, she is probably not alone.

But Ms Moreira has a beef with the scheme, which allows drivers to park their cars near an MRT station for $70 a month, inclusive of $40 in stored ez-link fare- card value.

It has to do with the snaking queues at the Ang Mo Kio MRT station, where she buys her monthly Park & Ride ticket. 'There are easily 70 people in the line each time I go there,' Ms Moreira said. 'And quite often, only one person is manning the counter.'

Although tickets can be bought from the 15th of every month, users have effectively only one day - or perhaps only a few hours - to purchase one because of the high demand.

'Sometimes, by the time you reach the front of the queue, it's sold out,' said Ms Moreira, who had previously driven down the Central Expressway to get to work, an increasingly unpopular option for northern residents because of the three Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) gantries along the way and two more on the way home.
Crossing all the gantries could cost motorists over $10 a day.

As the Government intensifies the ERP programme with the aim of raising public transport usage by 2020 to 70 per cent during the morning peak period - up from 63 per cent in 2004 - something as fundamental as Park & Ride should be made painless.

First of all, more carpark lots should be made available near train stations to meet what is possibly the highest demand for Park & Ride in its four decades of existence.

Purchasing tickets in advance should also be an option, as should an automated, queue-less way to buy them. Finally, the process should be paperless. Currently, you have to fill in a form each time you buy a ticket.

In short, improving the Park & Ride scheme must figure significantly in the suite of measures to beat congestion and raise reliance on public transport, since it could well be the most crucial piece of the puzzle.

Park & Ride users actually give up their space on city roads during peak periods and take trains and buses. More should be encouraged to go this way.

But if the worsening jams in the city centre are anything to go by, there are still many motorists who are content to bite the bullet and drive to town, cost be damned.

It is this cohort that the expanded ERP network - the 16 new gantries added this year to bring the total to 71 - will target.

In particular, five gantries around the Singapore River area which come online next month will deter motorists from passing through the area on their way out of the city in the evenings.

Higher charges will also tackle the common refrain that 'ERP rates keep rising, but the roads are still jammed'.

A new formula for pricing and adjusting ERP charges begins next month in the city centre.

Firstly, car owners will pay a minimum $2 per pass, up from $1 now. Subsequently, the fee will be raised in $1 increments, up from 50 cents.

And as long as less than 85 per cent of the motorists who pay ERP do not enjoy 'optimal speeds' - defined as 45-60kmh on expressways and 20-30kmh on arterial roads - rates will rise.

In essence, that means that rate increases are likely to be far sharper than they have been in the 10 years that ERP has been employed. If traffic patterns do not change significantly, ERP rates may well hit $10 per gantry.

Is the end of driving nigh then? Far from it. The underlying objective of ERP is not to drive cars off the land, but to rid it of choking congestion. There is little reason for free-flowing roads to be charged.

Therein lies the overlooked role of Park & Ride, a scheme also practised in places such as England and Australia.
It is unrealistic for any government to expect car owners to give up their freedom of personal mobility entirely, or for an increasingly affluent population to forgo the goal of car ownership.

Motoring is part and parcel of advancing economies. The world's vehicle population has grown by 80 per cent since 1995 to reach 900,000 today.

Stratospheric fuel prices and a wonderfully convenient public transport system notwithstanding, many people will continue to want to have the option of owning a car, even if they use it less than they do now.

One key to cutting usage is to make it convenient for drivers to switch to public transport.

Many drivers will baulk at the idea of having to jump through public transport hoops to get to work. But more could be convinced if they can drive to a nearby bus or train station, park their cars there at a reasonable rate and hop on public transport for a quick, fuss-free ride.

In other words, have a better Park & Ride scheme.

The fact is, this would turn Transport Minister Raymond Lim's bumper-sticker-style tagline for commuters - 'My other car is a bus or a train' - into reality.