Transportation

I chanced upon the blog of NTUC Income’s retired chief executive when his article was featured on tomorrow.sg on how one can claim their insurance after a traffic accident. I was browsing the rest of his entries when I found that he’s a proponent of improving existing public transport systems.

As one who have lived in California myself, I agree with this Chinese student on the typical American’s total reliance on cars, and their high consumption of energy. It’s sad that a country like America has such a substandard public transport system.

The problem of America’s public transportation system follows a never-ending vicious cycle. Americans view cars as a symbol of freedom, and cars are pretty cheap over there. The high ownership of cars makes Americans less inclined to take public transport. The lack of public transportation usage makes it difficult for the sector to improve their existing service. As such, it is difficult for the public transportation service to gather support to further improve their service. Eventually it is still better for Americans to use their own cars, and more cars are purchased.

I appreciated Singapore’s public transportation system more after my return from California, and I started to search around for alternatives to a world where public transport was so good – There will not be a need for cars. I came across Carfree.com, which is a website advocating for better organization of public transport such that there won’t be any need for automobile vehicles. I liked the idea a lot. After browsing the car-free website, it seemed to me that this concept is only feasible if one can design a new city from scratch. To redesign an existing densely populated urban area into this architecture is not an easy nor practical task.

Carfree Advocates the Six-Lobe City Design Architecture

Large Section of one of the 6 lobes

I also chanced across the concept of taxi-buses in the UK. The taxi-bus company maintains a network of minibuses with in built GPS devices. Prospective passengers just use their mobile phone to send a request for pick-up using their mobile phone, and the bus will pick them up within 3 minutes of submitting their request. It’s a dream that came true for convenient door-to-door public transportation. I wanted to send this piece of news to our existing taxi-companies, and perhaps the LTA to see if they can launch a proof of concept for this work in Singapore. The use of minibuses may not be necessary since all our taxis are already equipped with GPS devices.

GPS Display in Taxi Bus

I learnt a new concept after reading Mr Tan’s blog entry on PRTs. It appeared to me like an extension of our LRT service which I found interesting. In fact, I really loved the concept. However I do find the scale of this project a little too ambitious to embark on. Perhaps it’s because I’m not too clear about the concepts even after reading the detailed explanation of how PRT works. If a pilot project were to be launched, it will not bring me to anywhere I want to in Singapore, but I’m more restricted by the areas it covers. Does this mean that I have to change into multiple PRT carts if I need to get to a place that does not follow a straight line? Or will the PRT follow vehicle-guided instructions that will bring me to my destination?

Artist’s Impression of Personal Rapid Transit linked from 2getthere.

I was also happy that there is a Singapore startup (or website) – Tagxe that attempts to solve this need by providing a web-based solution for people to share taxi trips. Technically 4 people sharing a taxi trip makes the most sense because it is even more economical than buses, in terms of time saved per dollar amount. It’s a difficult initiative to kick off, but I hope that this startup will keep up its work and hopefully increase the utilization of taxis. (The ironic thing is that on the Facebook discussions board, one of the pet peeves of Singapore appears to be the “lack” of taxis!”)

Tagxe – Better option than buses or trains?

Of all these 4 concepts, I still find the taxi-bus concept more feasible and favor it more. I think I should really propose this concept to LTA and the taxi companies in Singapore. What do you think?