Singapore to stop adding more cars from 2018

Singapore announced it would cap car growth at zero percent from February 2018, citing congested roads and increased investment in public transport.

Cars for sale at a shopping mall in Singapore.

According to Reuters, Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) said the island nation will cut its annual growth rate of car ownership from the current 0.25% to 0% from February 2018. This rate will be reassessed in 2020.

In fact, Singapore has tightly controlled the number of vehicles by imposing annual growth caps on the number of vehicles and by competing for ownership and use, as only a limited number of such vehicles are licensed to operate each year.

Singapore is also one of the most densely populated countries in the world and has a highly developed public transport system.

Currently, according to the LTA, 12% of the island nation’s total land area is devoted to roads. Given the increasingly scarce and cramped land situation and the need to meet multiple needs at the same time, further expansion of the road network is difficult.

Meanwhile, since 2000, Singapore’s total population has grown by nearly 40%, to about 5.6 million people today. As of last year, there were more than 600,000 private and rental cars on the road.

That includes cars driven by drivers operating in ride-sharing networks like Grab and Uber, whose numbers are also growing.

The price of a mid-range car in Singapore is often nearly four times more expensive than in the US.

To date, Singapore has also expanded its rail network by 30%, while opening new routes and increasing the capacity of its public bus network.

According to LTA, the government will continue to invest an additional S$20 billion (US$14.7 billion) in new rail infrastructure, including S$4 billion for renewing, upgrading and expanding existing lines and another S$4 billion for developing the bus system over the next five years.

According to TTO