<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Oct 24, 2008
CONGESTION AND VEHICLE POPULATION INCREASE
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>LTA can't have it both ways
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->I REFER to Tuesday's comments by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) on last Saturday's article, 'More cars on the roads - COE system not working to plan'.
The LTA has hit the nail on the head in stating that 'at 3 per cent per annum, vehicle growth significantly outstrips road growth at 0.5 per cent'.
But the LTA sets the growth rates for both vehicles and roads, so it must take responsibility for failing to match these discordant parameters. This is why comparisons of congestion pricing approaches between Singapore and other countries, which have no vehicle quota system, are particularly inappropriate.
In the article, Mr Christopher Tan pointed out that in every year since 2005, the vehicle growth rate exceeded the highest growth rates allowed between 1998 and 2004. The LTA, however, would like us to think that averaging out the past 10 years' growth rates gives us a result that is just what the planners ordered. If we used this approach to measure economic growth from 2003 (at the start of the boom) until after the current recession has ended, we could congratulate ourselves on a brilliant averaged-out performance, even though many people would have become worse off from 2008 until the end of the recession. This would clearly fly in the face of reality.
We have been told elsewhere that the faster vehicle growth rate in recent years was due to complicated factors such as difficulties in predicting vehicle deregistration rates. In the private sector, making consistently wrong forecasts of an outcome based on parameters that are virtually all within the forecaster's near-real-time knowledge and easy control would be cause for severe reprimand, if not worse. In any case, all of these forecasting difficulties can be easily sidestepped by reverting to actual deregistration data as used in years past, with a suitable data collection period to smooth out undue peaks and troughs in demand.
Finally, and most tellingly, the LTA acknowledges that it is 'untenable' to continue the mismatch in growth rates the LTA itself has engineered. In other words, even when the system is 'working as planned', it is unsustainable as the prescribed limits for vehicle population growth exceed the LTA's willingness or ability to expand the road network. Motorists buy cars to drive them, not to park them for decoration outside their homes - especially as peak-hour public transport frequency has failed until recently to respond to heightened demand. Simon Sia
CONGESTION AND VEHICLE POPULATION INCREASE
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>LTA can't have it both ways
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->I REFER to Tuesday's comments by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) on last Saturday's article, 'More cars on the roads - COE system not working to plan'.
The LTA has hit the nail on the head in stating that 'at 3 per cent per annum, vehicle growth significantly outstrips road growth at 0.5 per cent'.
But the LTA sets the growth rates for both vehicles and roads, so it must take responsibility for failing to match these discordant parameters. This is why comparisons of congestion pricing approaches between Singapore and other countries, which have no vehicle quota system, are particularly inappropriate.
In the article, Mr Christopher Tan pointed out that in every year since 2005, the vehicle growth rate exceeded the highest growth rates allowed between 1998 and 2004. The LTA, however, would like us to think that averaging out the past 10 years' growth rates gives us a result that is just what the planners ordered. If we used this approach to measure economic growth from 2003 (at the start of the boom) until after the current recession has ended, we could congratulate ourselves on a brilliant averaged-out performance, even though many people would have become worse off from 2008 until the end of the recession. This would clearly fly in the face of reality.
We have been told elsewhere that the faster vehicle growth rate in recent years was due to complicated factors such as difficulties in predicting vehicle deregistration rates. In the private sector, making consistently wrong forecasts of an outcome based on parameters that are virtually all within the forecaster's near-real-time knowledge and easy control would be cause for severe reprimand, if not worse. In any case, all of these forecasting difficulties can be easily sidestepped by reverting to actual deregistration data as used in years past, with a suitable data collection period to smooth out undue peaks and troughs in demand.
Finally, and most tellingly, the LTA acknowledges that it is 'untenable' to continue the mismatch in growth rates the LTA itself has engineered. In other words, even when the system is 'working as planned', it is unsustainable as the prescribed limits for vehicle population growth exceed the LTA's willingness or ability to expand the road network. Motorists buy cars to drive them, not to park them for decoration outside their homes - especially as peak-hour public transport frequency has failed until recently to respond to heightened demand. Simon Sia
