The Public Transportation Management of Singapore

Transportation is one of the most important factors in maintaining the development of a healthy macroeconomy, ensuring people's quality of life, and controlling ecological environment pollution. However, building an effective transportation system is never easy. It always needs to be integrated with land use, urban planning, and social economy problem-solving. As the global society enters the new era of the Internet, the rapid expansion of the global population and the deteriorating environment make the current transportation planning face more severe challenges. Thus, how to effectively solve the transportation planning problems in such a situation to achieve sustainability and efficiency has become a global task.

There is a considerable number of developing countries in Asia experienced rapid population growth due to economic development. Today, excessive urbanization and industrialization, as well as the blind popularization of private cars, place a heavy burden on these countries. As the result of a disconnection between urban planning, land use, and transportation planning, these countries' big cities are congested, poorly managed, and polluted, largely stifling economic growth and trapping them in a vicious cycle. Singapore, however, as a part of Asia, a tiny city-state on the corner, with a mere 680 square kilometers of tiny and less than 4.2 million population, sets up the model of modern urban transportation planning. Singapore has a perfectly developed traffic network and its transportation system has a unique way of transportation management. The country uses its outstanding adjust strategy, plan of land use, and urban expansion policy to become the world-famous "garden city". Although Singapore has some special characteristics in its national conditions, its success contains a universal development experience.

With the progress of The Times, the strategy of sustainable progress has become the consensus of mankind. That means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to pursue better things in the future. For cities, the basic component of a sustainable progress strategy is self-regulation or minimizing waste. In many cities in North America and Asia, the use of private cars as the primary means of transportation diverges the goals of sustainable progress strategies because it increases the bunch of vehicles, which wastes natural resources and brings more pollution. Therefore, the establishment of a public transport-oriented urban transportation system is to solve the problems caused by motorization, because in this way can finally achieve the internal requirements of sustainable progress which is a philosophy that has helped Singapore develop a fast and efficient public transport system.              

               

Singapore's public transportation comes from four parts:

1. Mass Rapid Transit (MRT). MRT is the main part of its public transport system, covering major areas of the country with a total length of 86 km and 48 stops. MRT is responsible for the majority of the passenger flow on the major interregional frequent traffic arteries, ensuring the efficiency and stability of the transportation system as a whole.

2. Urban Light Rail Transit (LRT). LRT is a complement and extension of MRT, mainly used to connect MRT stations with major residential and commercial areas, thus achieving true door-to-door traffic. it's existing Bukit Bandang light rail system, which is 7.8 km long and has 13 stops, connects Bukit Bandang and Chua Cuo MRT stations. The whole system is fully automatic and the driverless locomotive is used to reduce the cost and improve operational efficiency. The maximum walking distance from each light rail station to nearby apartments is less than 400 meters, greatly reducing the overall travel time for travelers.

3. Bus system. The main Bus system function is to carry close traffic between the area and the adjacent area. All buses are charged by automatic bus fare cards, which can also be used for subways and light rail. Besides, bus transit stations use electronic bulletin boards to provide bus information services (the arrival time of the next bus) to facilitate passengers' choice of routes and modes of transportation.

4. Taxi system. The taxi system is used to fill the gap between public transportation and private transportation, and it is an indispensable part to form a complete public transportation system. Singapore has about 18,000 taxis, owned by four companies, with a limited number privately owned. About 70 percent of taxis are equipped with a global positioning system for easy management.

Thanks to a series of measures to limit applying private cars, Singapore's public transport system turns to significantly more efficient, attracting most of the traffic. In the overall objective of public transport, Singapore strives to achieve door to door and seamless traffic to reduce the gap inconvenience between public and private transport. The so-called door-to-door traffic and seamless traffic are to connect all kinds of urban activities such as work and shopping closely with the bus system, to control the walking distance required by users when they switch between different means of transportation within a reasonable range, to truly reflect the convenience and speediness of using the bus system. Since the light rail system has not been completed, the bus system is the main undertaker of realizing seamless traffic. Although it is not as stable and reliable as the light rail system, the large number of bus carriers and dotted stations still guarantee the overall efficiency of the system.

As mentioned above, the basic means to achieve sustainable urban progress is to control the demand for transportation, that is, to limit the number of privately owned cars. Economic progress is bound to stimulate people's consumption desire for private cars, and correctly guiding and controlling consumption requirements is a difficult task, it is difficult to achieve the goal through publicity and education. Using a series of government actions and policies to regulate traffic demand and achieve balanced progress is the most distinctive and successful part of Singapore's traffic planning and management.

Written by Yingjia Zhou

References:

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