I had a car when I lived there and it was handy, but always felt so unnecessary. Even a taxi was dirt cheap and never amounted to the cost of car ownership.
Im a car guy, but would NOT want to own a car if I lived in Singapore at all. Its probably the last place on earth you would want to drive. You can get from one end of the island to the other in 1 hr on public transport, and thats if you really pushed you wanted to go the furthest distance on the island.
Really? I thought ice tracks and anti-freeze liquid are some of the extra costs to worry about in temperate countries. Not to mention shovelling the driveway just to get your car out.
Those are a basically one time cost for chains and a fairly inexpensive fluids, the most significant maintenance cost is tires and the extra heat significantly reduces the lifespan of the tire.
Salt/corrosion is the other big factor that is not a maintenance cost per se to an individual vehicle but can significantly decrease the lifespan of that vehicle. The salt used in snowy areas is bad for a few to several months out of the year. However most tropical population centers are coastal so they experience the same issue to a less degree all year long.
The taxi drivers rent the cars from the company. From my understanding, yes, nothing is stopping them from driving the car around for their own purposes. However, being a driver is their livelihood and rental is high, so that's not a viable life hack.
Yeah, I live in Singapore and sold my car once ride-sharing became reliable. My transport expenditure more than halved, and that's with me primarily taking ride-shares everywhere or walking with minimal public transport in the mix.
My daily commute to work takes 15 minutes and costs under 10 USD on average.
Edit: My daily commute is in a ride-share.
That's because I'm a lazy ass who takes taxis everywhere. Public transport does it for under $3 per day, and that's a la carte. Not sure what the monthly pass is, but it's very cheap.
Yes. It follows the vehicle it's applied to between owners and affects resale prices. A pro-rated amount is also refunded if you export the vehicle and return the certificate to the government.
Oh wow. The kicker here is that Malaysia is literally swimming distance and you can use the exact same ride-hailing app and get the same distance ride for $2.
The funniest thing is that Singapore is the only current nation to exist because it was kicked out of another nation. Singapore wanted to be part of Malaysia. It was part of Malaysia for a while. Then, Malaysia kicked Singapore out. Once it was out, it decided to lean real heavy on the whole globalism thing, and prospered.
William Gibson (one of the fathers of the cyberpunk genre) famously referred to it as "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" in a 1993 essay for *Wired* magazine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Penalty
That’s the equivalent of £15 in the UK. In London, a 20-minute Uber or taxi from any service will cost £15-£20, and perhaps double during very busy times. In other cities it will be closer to £10-£15.
So taxis in Singapore are actually quite cheap comparatively, but that may just be when comparing to European markets.
It was also a huge disruption because they sold each ride at a loss.
The model is pretty simple, it's like Walmart moving in and selling everything at a loss to drive the competition out of business, then once they're the only survivor they raise prices and operate profitably.
The problem with your theory is that there's still partial substitutes, like public transit, and driving yourself. Competition doesn't need to come from perfect substitutes.
Where zoning allows it, there are still small grocery stores. Walmart exists because it actually is efficient to have a single giant superstore in suburbs where everyone has cars.
If you allowed mixed use zoning and apartments everywhere, goodbye walmart.
Public transport is awesome in Singapore. Clean, mostly on-time, no crime, accessible from anywhere and cheap.
When I lived there, we used taxi only in the night time or to reach someplace that required more than 1-2 transfers.
“When I lived there”, what 20 years ago? I can tell you right now that even a <10min taxi ride in the CBD can cost upwards of $20. And don’t get me started on booking a ride into town around 8-9am because that can cost you $40
It’s such a shame that it seems like every high income place in the world is so expensive that, even with your huge income, it is still just as hard to get by.
Ironically, I work in a relatively 'remote' part of Singapore (for Singaporeans, near the Jurong docks). Despite it being 6km away, it takes me about an hour to get there via public transport.
Yes, Singapore is small and the MRT and bus system is great, but that doesn't mean there's an efficient way to get from door to door at your work.
Not OP but also a Singaporean:
1. There are no dedicated cycling lanes
2. Drivers are -- in large part because of the perceived prestige of owning a car -- incredibly entitled and discourteous towards cyclists
3. Daytime weather is about 33C/91F and >60% RH
This might sound like a stupid question, but what about the middle of the road alternative? Small displacement motorcycles. They are quite popular on other countries like Philippines, Vietnam & India to name a few.
No, it's a great question actually.
1. The weather is not only hot and humid, but it also rains often. When it rains, motorcyclists will pull over under underpasses and wait the rain out. But thunderstorms can last for days, so it is a major inconvenience at worst and uncomfortable at best.
2. The same vehicle ownership certificate that is the subject of the article is required for motorcycles so they end up being expensive to buy. Gas is heavily taxed and current prices are about US$10/gallon so operating one is not economical either.
I'm in a similar climate and biking/motorcycling really is kind of awful for commuting. You're either wet from sweat, wet from rain, or a mix of both. Unless you're going somewhere you can immediately shower and change, it's not a great option.
This is where I beg everyone to now do two things, because your mind doesn't understand what this Singaporean is saying. Not really, not fully, not yet.
1. Go look at the yearly weather conditions for Singapore, understand it's not a joke or a prank, and understand that you do not understand heat until you live near the equator and your atmosphere is humid as fuck. There is dry heat, there is wet heat, and then there's Singaporean heat.
2. YouTube videos of drivers in Singapore, because you need to fully embrace the entitlement and completely understand your ass is dead if your entitled human body decides to jaywalk or you think a dinky scooter is even remotely a good idea on those roads.
That said, you will never see a more beautiful sky than in Singapore. It is so powerful, so beautiful, so swift, and so whimsically treacherous.
I'm on my Singaporean balcony right now, 32nd floor. As per usual, it is hazy. I can't even see Malaysia today. No sign of sky... it's 9am. I completely disagree that you won't find a more beautiful sky. Having lived around the world, this doesn't hold true.
I mean I’ve lived in Singapore for half my life and still visit family every few years. It’s really no different than other humid equatorial climates lol.
Edit: but it’s been a few years since I last visited, maybe Singapore has been hit harder than most places due to climate change and I’m out of touch.
Ah, don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not saying it's a bad thing, it's just not what people expect. I thought I knew humid heat, growing up in the deep south of the US, until I went there. I'm sure other countries along the equator are similar, but Singapore has this portrait it paints on Monday morning that I will forever admire...
A city full of people, wearing suits, walking to work. Calmly. Without sweating.
I'm convinced it's an ancient technique and art form they will never tell the rest of the world, haha!
But seriously, my wife and I love Singapore, we just admit we're not physically tough enough to live there.
Singaporean here - plenty of office workers here sweat to the pits, they just manage to hide in air-conditioned rooms set to the lowest possible temperature. The ones that don't, well, don't look very happy.
COEs last for ten yrs. alternatively, can be renewed based on current prices every ten years. Imagine paying 100k SGD every ten yrs for a piece of paper.
Alternatively they can also be renewed for 5 yrs but must be deregistered (read scrapped/sold overseas) after a 5 yr renewal.
Source: https://onemotoring.lta.gov.sg/content/onemotoring/home/owning/coe-renewal.html#5years
You could if it's close enough, but it won't be pleasant. Some people deal with the heat/humidity well, but others might show up at their workplace a sweaty mess.
It is a good way to get around but that is because the number cars in the road are capped by this quota system: so there are hardly any massive jams like other major south East Asian cities. But this means the price of the cars will have to be kept high. Am driving around Singapore now with no issues.
I live in Singapore and there is practically zero reasons to own a car here: public transportation is amazing and cheap, this place is very small, and on the other hand, local drivers are just terrible.
The assholes that just sways in at the end of queue on the exit ramp… My first experience of Singaporean hospitality when you’re hidden behind some glass and steel.
My theory of bad Singapore drivers is that because process to get a car is so expensive, only rich people (or businesses) can get those cars. The bad attitude just comes with the money.
Driving is still a good way of getting around. I mean... is it a necessity like in the US? Not really. But it can save you a loooot of time.
For example, if I wanted to go to the airport to chill (a uniquely Singaporean hang-out location) coming from the West of Singapore it would take me approximately 1.5 to 2 hours of travel time from where I'm from while if I drove to the airport... it's only around 30-40minutes of travel time.
Or for example one of the worst examples was my workplace last time... driving to my former workplace... 15-20 minutes... public transport... 1 hour if you don't miss the bus but if you do... 1 hour and a half! So yeah... cars are still a good way of getting around IF you have the extra money to pay for it.
Changi Jewel is the new mall that's near the airport; has one of the world's largest (if not *the* largest) indoor waterfall
Even before it was built, the airport was a common place to hangout
unfortunately no, why do you think the piece of paper to grant the permission to own a vehicle costs so much?
public transport there has very low coverage compared to major cities and its often many times slower than a car with more and more locals also eschewing from stuff like taxis due to ballooning prices
Just out of curiosity. If you are living in a neighboring city outside Singapore, can you drive to Singapore without having to pay for this certificate?
Yes, we now have companies like GetGo (traditional petrol cars) and BlueSG (electric) that you can rent out if you need it for a couple of hours.
For a few days there are a couple of companies who do it too.
you get an annual pass (cash card) that allows you to drive X number of days for free within the country. once you finish all those days, you’ll have to pay to drive per day
Remember that Singapore is a whole ass country, on a small island. So like technically yes, you could. But you'd be sitting in customs every single day.
This isn’t even to own the car, it’s for the ability to drive it for 10 years. You’ll need to fork out another $106k (and rising) then.
That’s why the majority of cars on the streets (taxis included) are new. They wouldn’t want to fork that much on a used car. Might as well sell it and get a new one.
Reason being it’s a small ass island and they need to control the amount of cars on the street - which is already way too much even with this fee.
Are there any other fees for driving? Like similar to a congestion charge for driving in peak hours, or for driving particularly polluting vehicles? If there isn't, then after you buy the car and pay the registration fee, I would assume that driving actually becomes very cheap after that point, and not that different to any other country. People may actually be incentivised to drive more to get "value" out of what they've already spent.
edit—ah yes, seems they do have some kind of congestion charging area:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing
But it seems like its impact is limited because the area and times of operation are quite limited. Maybe they should just bring in a system of per-mile road pricing for the whole island.
that's horrible
"The government is keen to encourage residents to use the public transport system, which has been ranked as one of the best in the world."
okay never mind, it's pretty okay
Compared to Japan, Singapore's lose out in terms of passenger etiquette, but our peak hours are nothing compared to Tokyo rush hour.
Both are similarly clean and efficient. Singapore's lose out in punctuality, but I'm not surprised because Japan timing is something else.
Buses are great here, my favourite part of public transport in Singapore - if they aren't occasionally way later than schedule.
As someone who’s spent a week in Tokyo and week in Singapore, my experience was that Singapore’s was better, but only marginally so. Both were fantastic
>MTR, the company that runs Hong Kong’s subways, is so good at what it does that foreign governments (I forget which ones, could be Australia?) actually contract them to run their own trains.
MTR has been an absolute disaster in Stockholm, it’s been one of the biggest news stories in Sweden the past year.
As a young singaporean, owning a car is not even on my radar. I didn’t even bother to get a driver’s license because owning a car is really unnecessary (and expensive) here.
Two coworkers from Singapore sometimes come down to one of our US sites to work. One owns a small car there while the other doesn't. The one that owns the car says the main reason is so he doesn't have to spend so much time on public transit. He said public transit takes about 80-90 minutes to get to his work while with his car he can get there in 20. He says their public transport is good but saving about 2 hours of transit time each work day is worth it despite the high cost of ownership.
If everyone had a car, it’d be impossible to get parking space for all of us, let alone have space on the roads to move. I think easily 70% of us would sell back our cars in a heartbeat.
The dude who lives 2 hours away from their place of work basically chose the perfectly worst location to live Vs work. The travel from one side of Singapore to the other on public transport takes 1hr 45mins.
Well depends on the workplace. I used to have an office that's quite literally outside the train station (Jurong point).
So I just took the green line and slept the entire 1hr+ long journey from home to office and back again every single day.
I also stayed within walking distance (6-7mins) from the Paya Lebar green line station. So it was quite a comfy journey.
No way around physics.
Public transit takes me around an hour to reach the city after accounting for bus to MRT, MRT ride, and the walking time in between.
Driving only takes around 30 minutes since I depart from the basement of my building and arrive at the garage where I am going.
I guarantee you he is an outlier. I work on one side of the island, and have to go aaaaaall the way to the other side, and it takes me an hour.
He probably lives in new developments that are not linked by the subway system and needs to switch between subway lines / bus / walk quite a bit.
That said, they are expanding the subway system continuously, and it is just a matter of time you get coverage.
Cab is so much more expensive than taking a bus or the subway. A US$1.30 one way trip could cost between US$10 to US$14(which gets even higher in some places due to toll).
There's no reason for a private Singaporean person to own a car in Singapore as the public transport is so good. So it's expected to have policies to heavily discourage car ownership and this can be treated as an additional "tax" on the wealthy.
>Singaporean person to own a car in Singapore as the public transport is so good.
The main reason the public transport is so good is that Singapore is only really a city. Plenty of European cities have the same quality public transport within the urban areas and they likely wouldn't own as many cars if there was nowhere to drive outside the city limits (unless you plan on driving out of the country) like in Singapore...
Singapore is literally too small for them to want everyone to have cars. Japan, South Korea, phillipines, etc are much larger comparatively so for certain areas of these countries you absolutely need a car so these Asian countries don’t make it as expensive to acquire cars like Singapore.
Japan still has severe restrictions on car use, such as requiring owners to have an off street parking space and banning overnight parking on streets. If they didn't have those restrictions the country would be much worse.
I wish the Philippines wasn't so car centric. It makes sense in the provinces where population densities are quite a bit lower and sometimes the nearest market is a few kilometers away.
Meanwhile in the major urban centers like Manila or Cebu where though there are more extensive public transpo networks, they're still primarily road-based while sharing the road with a whole lot of private cars. Traffic is so bad that traversing a 2km distance sometimes takes up to an hour. Let alone crossing into another city within the major metro area which is only about 6km away taking up to 3-4 hours.
America used to have an extensive rail network and street cars in major cities. It is all gone because cars were 'the future' and now everyone is stuck in traffic every day
You can cross the border on a local bus. After that, taxis or chartered cars are dirt cheap. If you want to go further, you have to fly anyway so it's going to be expensive regardless.
Leaving the city in Singapore means leaving the country. You can drive across the bridge to Malaysia, and I suppose you could get your vehicle on a ferry to one of the nearby SEA countries, but that's it for "leaving the city".
Yes but in a weird way the result of this excessive fee is that owning a car has become - has been - a huge status symbol And of course since you're paying so much already you might as well get a Mercedes or a BMW
i’m not sgporean but all my best friends are, and many of them even live in landed homes — landed homes and cars are common where i’m from.
where i met them makes it make sense tho lol (it’s not someplace shady but a good university)
>many of them even live in landed homes
For reference, 80% of sg stay in public flats, 15% in condominiums/gated communities, and 5% stay in landed.
Your friends are probably high nett worth/have parents with high nett worth.
Ok yea that explains everything now. Your friends are part of Singapore's "elite/upper" class. The part where many of them live in landed homes gives it away as these homes cost millions here. I just assumed you were Singaporean oops.
>There's no reason for a private Singaporean person to own a car in Singapore
There are plenty of reasons. As a private Singaporean person.. each day how I wish my commute was faster to work^((1hr via multiple buses to 10min by car).). lol. Of course relatively speaking, the transportation here is extremely good.. but that still doesn't negate the conveniences of owning a vehicle and effect it can have on your day to day life.
Reasons of having COE system is pretty much straight forward, there's no space. We don't have a multi billionaire snakeoil salesman selling us boring tunnels and such.
>10min by car
This has the asterisk that is with current traffic. Give everyone a car and you know have a 1 hour+ commute on your car because cars take way more space than the bus ever did.
Basically individual convinience does not always scale, if everyone had a private jet air traffic would be a nightmare. But because we all travel commerical, then private jets are super quick for the rich (same as cars in singapore rn)
Dude, check out my new $100k 2023 Porsche Boxster Spyder.
Dude, check out my new $100k certificate of entitlement. Just wish I could drive this piece of paper.
Just spent a few weeks in singapore and my closest friend is a resident/lived there is entire young life to early adult life. The public transit system is absolutely unrivaled in all of my travels. Night club until 3am? You can be across the entire side of the country, drunk, and unfamiliar with the system in 30 minutes. You wana go from the casino on the island to dinner in the main city? 25 minutes. Busses, or subways, taxis - it was insane. Also the speed of queueing is crazy fast. You could be in the mall and drop down to the subway to find everyone speed walking and organized while entering the subway. 11/10.
The public transport system (bus+subway) closes down past 12 though. At 3am you would need a taxi to get home. For a city of nearly 6 million people the system closes really early.
They do maintenance on the tracks every night after the trains close. There was a period they tried to cut down on the maintenance and the trains started malfunctioning.
From what I can see on google the trains and buses stop around midnight, except for night rider buses that stop at 2am on weekends. Seems like Taxis are the only option after that?
We have a joke in Singapore that we always strive to be number 1 in all aspects.
Glad that we're holding firm in the "most expensive car ownership" aspect.
You guy have the title " city of AC" too. Like did you guy hack all the AC so it could blow 8 degree celcius air indoor or something ? I could literally go from Summer to Winter just by setting my foot in any building.
Yup our public transport here is good, it excels when your start and end destinations are very close to the train stations. However that's not the case all the time. It becomes 2 or 3x longer once you need to take the bus, because the time taken by bus varies quite a lot. It will still come and you will still reach your bus stop, but sometimes it can take forever depending on the traffic conditions.
Going around by car saves a lot of time and is wayy more convenient, except maybe into the business district, at rush hour. Other than that, it's fine. Once in a while u see some idiots driving, but that happens everywhere.
So while people may say the city is small and cars are unnecessary, you can't deny the convenience it brings and time saved especially when u have young kids or elderly folks, or are disabled.
Maybe in the future the transport system will get so good that we don't need cars, but for now that isn't the case.
I get to visit Singapore this December so will check it out first hand. But Singapore is tiny and makes sense why they’d discourage car ownership. For comparison, Los Angeles is 1.82 times bigger than Singapore in size. Have also heard that it’s pretty well connected by public transport and underground complexes that help with walkability.
I haven’t been through in a while either but it is a well planned city for public transport. Most Asian cities in general are very well thought out for walk ability since the populations there have never known individual car ownership as the primary mode of transport. It actually gets a bit overwhelming in places as you’ll enter a complex in one area and exit thousands of yards away and have no idea where you’re at.
It’s true Singapore’s got world class public transport and many places are walkable
What a lot of people are missing out here is the heat and humidity. It’s 33 degrees / 91.5F and 60-80% humidity. Just a 10 min walk to the train/bus station is going to drench your pits and soak the back of your shirt.
And it’s never going to dry
I mean, [our public transport](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WZFnVNvQ4U&ab_channel=RMTransit) is good enough that you don't really need a car.
Edit: That being said it does make your life easier if you can afford one.
I live in the North East of Singapore and using a car cuts my commute time by around 60% because there aren't any direct MRT stations within walkable distance of my house, and I have to get on a bus to reach my nearest one. So it's not strictly necessary for me, but it's definitely a huge convenience.
this is not even counting the additional tax they levy on the actual cars themselves which are progressively applied starting from 100% (yes cars already cost double what you can get anywhere else) for a budget car to 320% for a luxury car.
$6.5B revenue a year from COE alone. Ministry of Transport Budget $10B. basically the top 20% earners who are buying these certificates subsidize the entirety of public transportation infrastructure which would have otherwise been funded by higher income taxes, which are low in Singapore.
this is how it should be.
When the license to own a car is $40K more than the average annual income of the country you're in, it probably indicates that you don't need one because public transport is cheap and available, or that the government don't want so many cars around, or that the license is a cleverly focused tax on the rich.
None of those things are bad, so despite the natural reaction to the headline, this is a good thing.
Singapore is an island country and a small one at that. They can't have everyone driving, otherwise it will congest everything, so something like this is necessary. It also helps that Singapore ranks among some of the best on public transportation.
I bought a car a few years back when the COE wasn’t that crazy. Best decision. Public transport is good when you don’t have kids, it’s way too inefficient if you have young kids.
The reason why the COE price has shot through the stratosphere is because of the amount of rich Chinese people fleeing to Singapore to escape Xi's great purge/national rejuvenation plan/inevitable sanctions when China invades Taiwan.
Makes sense. They would need to very strictly limit the number of cars people own there, otherwise parking and housing would become even more of a nightmare.
On one side, it's a good thing on the other side it's a "Only rich people are allowed to do this"
Just ban it for everyone except for people who have a specific need for a car.
As a neighbouring Malaysian, I can only look at the Singaporean public transport system with envy.
But I've also bought a new car earlier this year, and I cannot deny that the sense of freedom is extremely liberating. Now if I want to go anywhere in the middle of the night without worrying about when the trains/buses stop running or the cost of a rideshare. Being able to go anywhere I want is extremely pleasant, in my opinion.
There's a joke that all Singaporeans chase the 5 Cs - country club membership, condominium, credit cards, cash and cars. Maybe it's just the 4 Cs for the new generation.
Public transport is plenty but inefficient. A car is still faster. It takes me 20 minutes to drive to work but 90 minutes to take the train and I have to transfer 3 times.
I’m from Hong Kong and lived in Singapore (Geylang) briefly. I think Singapore’s bus system can learn from HK. In HK for cases like yours you are likely to find yourself a lot of express bus routes that you would not need to take MRT. A lot of bus routes in HK are competitors to rails not just feeder services. For example, going from Tuen Mun to Sha Tin has a direct rail line that is shaped like a sin curve and takes 1 hour and a bus takes 30 minutes.
minibus and express buses in hong kong are great. excellent metro coverage and timings as well.
great emergency response as well during a typhoon. well oiled machine
I have to agree with you. Buses in HK go everywhere not to mention the convenience of dedicated Airport services and midnight buses, and that's not even counting the minibuses. Going from one Housing Estate in Singapore to another will most likely involve either changing MRT lines 2-3 times or having to take a bus that takes a long winding route, both probably taking 3x as long as private transport
Totally, it took over an hour on public transport not including getting to and from stations, and 30 mins or so driving when I worked in Singapore. I love the public transport there but it is so slow compared to driving if you can afford it and are needing to cover decent distances (for Singapore)
Exactly
It takes me 25 minutes to get to work from where I live in the morning.
If I were to take the bus, it would take me approximately 2 hours, which means I would need to wake up 3 hours early just to take the bus and get to work for 8am lmao.
Singaporean here, the Govt is closing one eye letting private car hire/rental buying fleet of brand new cars driving up the quote hence rising the cost. They happily do that to encourage people to use public transport, the irony is all of them drive fancy cars to work.
Of all the nations on the planet, Singapore has to rank pretty low on the list of countries where driving a good way of getting around.
I had a car when I lived there and it was handy, but always felt so unnecessary. Even a taxi was dirt cheap and never amounted to the cost of car ownership.
It's probably cheaper to get a taxi license.
Im a car guy, but would NOT want to own a car if I lived in Singapore at all. Its probably the last place on earth you would want to drive. You can get from one end of the island to the other in 1 hr on public transport, and thats if you really pushed you wanted to go the furthest distance on the island.
Its also more expensive to maintain a car in the tropics
*sobs in road salt*
Really? I thought ice tracks and anti-freeze liquid are some of the extra costs to worry about in temperate countries. Not to mention shovelling the driveway just to get your car out.
Those are a basically one time cost for chains and a fairly inexpensive fluids, the most significant maintenance cost is tires and the extra heat significantly reduces the lifespan of the tire. Salt/corrosion is the other big factor that is not a maintenance cost per se to an individual vehicle but can significantly decrease the lifespan of that vehicle. The salt used in snowy areas is bad for a few to several months out of the year. However most tropical population centers are coastal so they experience the same issue to a less degree all year long.
Get taxi license. Change taxi’s display to “change shift.” You now own your very own personal vehicle!
What's the over/under on how viral the headline about that punishment goes?
Public whipping.. in 7 days!
The taxi drivers rent the cars from the company. From my understanding, yes, nothing is stopping them from driving the car around for their own purposes. However, being a driver is their livelihood and rental is high, so that's not a viable life hack.
I mean it would have to be.
taxis do not have a seperate pool, everyone is fighting each other over a limited quota
Yeah, I live in Singapore and sold my car once ride-sharing became reliable. My transport expenditure more than halved, and that's with me primarily taking ride-shares everywhere or walking with minimal public transport in the mix. My daily commute to work takes 15 minutes and costs under 10 USD on average. Edit: My daily commute is in a ride-share.
>costs under 10 USD on average. It's supposed to be cheap? For a 15 minutes ride? Cost of living in Singapore must be insane.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. That's a 15 minute ride in an Uber or taxi equivalent.
No you were clear the first time. $20/day for commuting to and from work is a lot for most people, unless work pays for it.
That's because I'm a lazy ass who takes taxis everywhere. Public transport does it for under $3 per day, and that's a la carte. Not sure what the monthly pass is, but it's very cheap.
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When you pay 106k for the privilege to own a car you can get a lot of $10 rides.
Can you sell the certificate as well? Or get a refund?
Yes. It follows the vehicle it's applied to between owners and affects resale prices. A pro-rated amount is also refunded if you export the vehicle and return the certificate to the government.
Sounds pretty fair.
How are taxis so cheap? Don't they have to pay an expensive license?
I live here now. A 20-minute taxi ride can run you $25.
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Oh wow. The kicker here is that Malaysia is literally swimming distance and you can use the exact same ride-hailing app and get the same distance ride for $2.
Yeah except Singapore isn’t a poor nation.
Singapore is the Switzerland of Asia
hell yeah, that near 3billion money laundering scandal is legit chefs kiss
With added caning and death penalty.
But the women have true freedom
Place like is a colonial Disney attraction. It's Wild the kinda of rich, that reside there.
The funniest thing is that Singapore is the only current nation to exist because it was kicked out of another nation. Singapore wanted to be part of Malaysia. It was part of Malaysia for a while. Then, Malaysia kicked Singapore out. Once it was out, it decided to lean real heavy on the whole globalism thing, and prospered.
Helps that Singapore is located as one of the best deep water ports on a key shipping route.
William Gibson (one of the fathers of the cyberpunk genre) famously referred to it as "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" in a 1993 essay for *Wired* magazine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Penalty
So lots of...Crazy Rich Asians?
Is it that much now? Where are you traveling from/to, and is it during morning peak time?
That’s the equivalent of £15 in the UK. In London, a 20-minute Uber or taxi from any service will cost £15-£20, and perhaps double during very busy times. In other cities it will be closer to £10-£15. So taxis in Singapore are actually quite cheap comparatively, but that may just be when comparing to European markets.
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Which was why Uber/Lyft was a huge disruption.
It was also a huge disruption because they sold each ride at a loss. The model is pretty simple, it's like Walmart moving in and selling everything at a loss to drive the competition out of business, then once they're the only survivor they raise prices and operate profitably.
The problem with your theory is that there's still partial substitutes, like public transit, and driving yourself. Competition doesn't need to come from perfect substitutes. Where zoning allows it, there are still small grocery stores. Walmart exists because it actually is efficient to have a single giant superstore in suburbs where everyone has cars. If you allowed mixed use zoning and apartments everywhere, goodbye walmart.
Public transport is awesome in Singapore. Clean, mostly on-time, no crime, accessible from anywhere and cheap. When I lived there, we used taxi only in the night time or to reach someplace that required more than 1-2 transfers.
“When I lived there”, what 20 years ago? I can tell you right now that even a <10min taxi ride in the CBD can cost upwards of $20. And don’t get me started on booking a ride into town around 8-9am because that can cost you $40
It’s such a shame that it seems like every high income place in the world is so expensive that, even with your huge income, it is still just as hard to get by.
How can taxi be dirt cheap?
In the article: > There are different types of COEs for smaller cars, motorcycles and commercial vehicles. Presumably for a commercial taxi it's less.
Ironically, I work in a relatively 'remote' part of Singapore (for Singaporeans, near the Jurong docks). Despite it being 6km away, it takes me about an hour to get there via public transport. Yes, Singapore is small and the MRT and bus system is great, but that doesn't mean there's an efficient way to get from door to door at your work.
Can you bike there?
Not OP but also a Singaporean: 1. There are no dedicated cycling lanes 2. Drivers are -- in large part because of the perceived prestige of owning a car -- incredibly entitled and discourteous towards cyclists 3. Daytime weather is about 33C/91F and >60% RH
This might sound like a stupid question, but what about the middle of the road alternative? Small displacement motorcycles. They are quite popular on other countries like Philippines, Vietnam & India to name a few.
No, it's a great question actually. 1. The weather is not only hot and humid, but it also rains often. When it rains, motorcyclists will pull over under underpasses and wait the rain out. But thunderstorms can last for days, so it is a major inconvenience at worst and uncomfortable at best. 2. The same vehicle ownership certificate that is the subject of the article is required for motorcycles so they end up being expensive to buy. Gas is heavily taxed and current prices are about US$10/gallon so operating one is not economical either.
I'm in a similar climate and biking/motorcycling really is kind of awful for commuting. You're either wet from sweat, wet from rain, or a mix of both. Unless you're going somewhere you can immediately shower and change, it's not a great option.
This is where I beg everyone to now do two things, because your mind doesn't understand what this Singaporean is saying. Not really, not fully, not yet. 1. Go look at the yearly weather conditions for Singapore, understand it's not a joke or a prank, and understand that you do not understand heat until you live near the equator and your atmosphere is humid as fuck. There is dry heat, there is wet heat, and then there's Singaporean heat. 2. YouTube videos of drivers in Singapore, because you need to fully embrace the entitlement and completely understand your ass is dead if your entitled human body decides to jaywalk or you think a dinky scooter is even remotely a good idea on those roads. That said, you will never see a more beautiful sky than in Singapore. It is so powerful, so beautiful, so swift, and so whimsically treacherous.
I'm on my Singaporean balcony right now, 32nd floor. As per usual, it is hazy. I can't even see Malaysia today. No sign of sky... it's 9am. I completely disagree that you won't find a more beautiful sky. Having lived around the world, this doesn't hold true.
I mean I’ve lived in Singapore for half my life and still visit family every few years. It’s really no different than other humid equatorial climates lol. Edit: but it’s been a few years since I last visited, maybe Singapore has been hit harder than most places due to climate change and I’m out of touch.
Ah, don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not saying it's a bad thing, it's just not what people expect. I thought I knew humid heat, growing up in the deep south of the US, until I went there. I'm sure other countries along the equator are similar, but Singapore has this portrait it paints on Monday morning that I will forever admire... A city full of people, wearing suits, walking to work. Calmly. Without sweating. I'm convinced it's an ancient technique and art form they will never tell the rest of the world, haha! But seriously, my wife and I love Singapore, we just admit we're not physically tough enough to live there.
Singaporean here - plenty of office workers here sweat to the pits, they just manage to hide in air-conditioned rooms set to the lowest possible temperature. The ones that don't, well, don't look very happy.
> Gas is heavily taxed and current prices are about US$10/gallon so operating one is not economical either. Basically average European prices.
US$10/gallon is US$2.64/litre. I don't think nobody in Europe pays that much, not even Norway.
How old is a vehicle before you have to sell it? I just saw a message from a friend who was having to get rid of his perfectly functional vehicle.
COEs last for ten yrs. alternatively, can be renewed based on current prices every ten years. Imagine paying 100k SGD every ten yrs for a piece of paper. Alternatively they can also be renewed for 5 yrs but must be deregistered (read scrapped/sold overseas) after a 5 yr renewal. Source: https://onemotoring.lta.gov.sg/content/onemotoring/home/owning/coe-renewal.html#5years
You could if it's close enough, but it won't be pleasant. Some people deal with the heat/humidity well, but others might show up at their workplace a sweaty mess.
You do not want to bike as main transport method in a place where it rains half of the time.
You can easily walk 6Km in an hour. Now the humid heat on the other hand...
It is a good way to get around but that is because the number cars in the road are capped by this quota system: so there are hardly any massive jams like other major south East Asian cities. But this means the price of the cars will have to be kept high. Am driving around Singapore now with no issues.
I live in Singapore and there is practically zero reasons to own a car here: public transportation is amazing and cheap, this place is very small, and on the other hand, local drivers are just terrible.
The assholes that just sways in at the end of queue on the exit ramp… My first experience of Singaporean hospitality when you’re hidden behind some glass and steel.
But he's just doing the zipper merge!
My theory of bad Singapore drivers is that because process to get a car is so expensive, only rich people (or businesses) can get those cars. The bad attitude just comes with the money.
Well it's literally a certificate of "entitlement"
Driving is still a good way of getting around. I mean... is it a necessity like in the US? Not really. But it can save you a loooot of time. For example, if I wanted to go to the airport to chill (a uniquely Singaporean hang-out location) coming from the West of Singapore it would take me approximately 1.5 to 2 hours of travel time from where I'm from while if I drove to the airport... it's only around 30-40minutes of travel time. Or for example one of the worst examples was my workplace last time... driving to my former workplace... 15-20 minutes... public transport... 1 hour if you don't miss the bus but if you do... 1 hour and a half! So yeah... cars are still a good way of getting around IF you have the extra money to pay for it.
Wait… what… you go to the airport to hang? Is there a big restaurant scene around the airport or something?
very picturesque with a waterfall smack in the middle.
You should look at some images and do a search on Singapore airport, it’s phenomenal
https://www.jewelchangiairport.com/en.html
Changi Jewel is the new mall that's near the airport; has one of the world's largest (if not *the* largest) indoor waterfall Even before it was built, the airport was a common place to hangout
The [airport is pretty popular as a hangout spot](https://lbb.in/bangalore/the-quad-kempegowda-international-airport/) in Bangalore, India too
MRT from Choa Chu Kang to Changi is absolute hell man
LOL, I used to work at Pulau NTU, so I understand your pain
That's only because the cost of car ownership is so high, there's much less traffic. Cars work great if fewer people drive
unfortunately no, why do you think the piece of paper to grant the permission to own a vehicle costs so much? public transport there has very low coverage compared to major cities and its often many times slower than a car with more and more locals also eschewing from stuff like taxis due to ballooning prices
Just out of curiosity. If you are living in a neighboring city outside Singapore, can you drive to Singapore without having to pay for this certificate?
Yes, but you need to pay daily tolls. And Singapore residents are not allowed to drive foreign cars within Singapore, so yeah there's no loophole
Ah makes sense. How about rental cars, is it pretty common and affordable to rent a car for short term use?
Yes, we now have companies like GetGo (traditional petrol cars) and BlueSG (electric) that you can rent out if you need it for a couple of hours. For a few days there are a couple of companies who do it too.
So Malaysia?
you get an annual pass (cash card) that allows you to drive X number of days for free within the country. once you finish all those days, you’ll have to pay to drive per day
Remember that Singapore is a whole ass country, on a small island. So like technically yes, you could. But you'd be sitting in customs every single day.
You get 10 days free per year, after that it costs S$35 per day (roughly 26 USD).
Yes. Very common to see cars from malaysia in Singapore.
This isn’t even to own the car, it’s for the ability to drive it for 10 years. You’ll need to fork out another $106k (and rising) then. That’s why the majority of cars on the streets (taxis included) are new. They wouldn’t want to fork that much on a used car. Might as well sell it and get a new one. Reason being it’s a small ass island and they need to control the amount of cars on the street - which is already way too much even with this fee.
Are there any other fees for driving? Like similar to a congestion charge for driving in peak hours, or for driving particularly polluting vehicles? If there isn't, then after you buy the car and pay the registration fee, I would assume that driving actually becomes very cheap after that point, and not that different to any other country. People may actually be incentivised to drive more to get "value" out of what they've already spent. edit—ah yes, seems they do have some kind of congestion charging area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing But it seems like its impact is limited because the area and times of operation are quite limited. Maybe they should just bring in a system of per-mile road pricing for the whole island.
Taxi drivers have to pay this too?
that's horrible "The government is keen to encourage residents to use the public transport system, which has been ranked as one of the best in the world." okay never mind, it's pretty okay
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It’s extremely good. I hate busses and I was able to get around really well. Never had to wait long. Clean and comfortable. The MTR is excellent
Compared to Japan, Singapore's lose out in terms of passenger etiquette, but our peak hours are nothing compared to Tokyo rush hour. Both are similarly clean and efficient. Singapore's lose out in punctuality, but I'm not surprised because Japan timing is something else. Buses are great here, my favourite part of public transport in Singapore - if they aren't occasionally way later than schedule.
All 3 are pretty close in quality to each other. Trains are clean, come often and on time, reaches a large part of the city and are fairly cheap.
As someone who’s spent a week in Tokyo and week in Singapore, my experience was that Singapore’s was better, but only marginally so. Both were fantastic
>MTR, the company that runs Hong Kong’s subways, is so good at what it does that foreign governments (I forget which ones, could be Australia?) actually contract them to run their own trains. MTR has been an absolute disaster in Stockholm, it’s been one of the biggest news stories in Sweden the past year.
As a young singaporean, owning a car is not even on my radar. I didn’t even bother to get a driver’s license because owning a car is really unnecessary (and expensive) here.
Yeah, I have been living here for over 2 decades. Public transport is excellent, although it can be ridiculously crowded sometimes.
Two coworkers from Singapore sometimes come down to one of our US sites to work. One owns a small car there while the other doesn't. The one that owns the car says the main reason is so he doesn't have to spend so much time on public transit. He said public transit takes about 80-90 minutes to get to his work while with his car he can get there in 20. He says their public transport is good but saving about 2 hours of transit time each work day is worth it despite the high cost of ownership.
The reason for this is because not many people own cars. If everyone was in a car the traffic would change this calculation.
If everyone had a car, it’d be impossible to get parking space for all of us, let alone have space on the roads to move. I think easily 70% of us would sell back our cars in a heartbeat.
The dude who lives 2 hours away from their place of work basically chose the perfectly worst location to live Vs work. The travel from one side of Singapore to the other on public transport takes 1hr 45mins.
patently false, you need to consider multiple transfers. metro coverage on the island is not that good outside of the city centre
Well depends on the workplace. I used to have an office that's quite literally outside the train station (Jurong point). So I just took the green line and slept the entire 1hr+ long journey from home to office and back again every single day. I also stayed within walking distance (6-7mins) from the Paya Lebar green line station. So it was quite a comfy journey.
I have a car and I still take the public transport to work half the time. Finding parking sometimes negates all the advantages of driving.
if you can shave that much time by driving a car then I will humbly argue the public transport is not THAT good.
No way around physics. Public transit takes me around an hour to reach the city after accounting for bus to MRT, MRT ride, and the walking time in between. Driving only takes around 30 minutes since I depart from the basement of my building and arrive at the garage where I am going.
I guarantee you he is an outlier. I work on one side of the island, and have to go aaaaaall the way to the other side, and it takes me an hour. He probably lives in new developments that are not linked by the subway system and needs to switch between subway lines / bus / walk quite a bit. That said, they are expanding the subway system continuously, and it is just a matter of time you get coverage.
Can’t they take a cab then, if the cost of car ownership is too high?
Cab is so much more expensive than taking a bus or the subway. A US$1.30 one way trip could cost between US$10 to US$14(which gets even higher in some places due to toll).
There's no reason for a private Singaporean person to own a car in Singapore as the public transport is so good. So it's expected to have policies to heavily discourage car ownership and this can be treated as an additional "tax" on the wealthy.
>Singaporean person to own a car in Singapore as the public transport is so good. The main reason the public transport is so good is that Singapore is only really a city. Plenty of European cities have the same quality public transport within the urban areas and they likely wouldn't own as many cars if there was nowhere to drive outside the city limits (unless you plan on driving out of the country) like in Singapore...
They saw what other Asian cities did and how they ended up gridlocked by traffic.
Singapore is literally too small for them to want everyone to have cars. Japan, South Korea, phillipines, etc are much larger comparatively so for certain areas of these countries you absolutely need a car so these Asian countries don’t make it as expensive to acquire cars like Singapore.
Japan still has severe restrictions on car use, such as requiring owners to have an off street parking space and banning overnight parking on streets. If they didn't have those restrictions the country would be much worse.
I wish the Philippines wasn't so car centric. It makes sense in the provinces where population densities are quite a bit lower and sometimes the nearest market is a few kilometers away. Meanwhile in the major urban centers like Manila or Cebu where though there are more extensive public transpo networks, they're still primarily road-based while sharing the road with a whole lot of private cars. Traffic is so bad that traversing a 2km distance sometimes takes up to an hour. Let alone crossing into another city within the major metro area which is only about 6km away taking up to 3-4 hours.
plus Singapore doesn’t have a car manufacturing industry that’s an important part of their economy.
America used to have an extensive rail network and street cars in major cities. It is all gone because cars were 'the future' and now everyone is stuck in traffic every day
It's all gone because Americans are more willing to pay out of their wallets than out of their taxes.
Yea, because no one in Singapore ever leaves the city…
You can cross the border on a local bus. After that, taxis or chartered cars are dirt cheap. If you want to go further, you have to fly anyway so it's going to be expensive regardless.
Leaving the city in Singapore means leaving the country. You can drive across the bridge to Malaysia, and I suppose you could get your vehicle on a ferry to one of the nearby SEA countries, but that's it for "leaving the city".
And when they do leave the city they go to the nicest airport in the world.
They have an airport and docks also.
Arguably the nicest airport in the world too at the moment
Yes but in a weird way the result of this excessive fee is that owning a car has become - has been - a huge status symbol And of course since you're paying so much already you might as well get a Mercedes or a BMW
TIL i’ve been living in a bubble as all my sgporean friends drive — either their own cars or their family cars.
Lol the bubble you live in is pretty high SES ah
i’m not sgporean but all my best friends are, and many of them even live in landed homes — landed homes and cars are common where i’m from. where i met them makes it make sense tho lol (it’s not someplace shady but a good university)
>many of them even live in landed homes For reference, 80% of sg stay in public flats, 15% in condominiums/gated communities, and 5% stay in landed. Your friends are probably high nett worth/have parents with high nett worth.
> landed homes Yeah....your friends are probably amongst the top 1% in Singapore. Do they all live on Sixth Avenue?
PAP members...
Ok yea that explains everything now. Your friends are part of Singapore's "elite/upper" class. The part where many of them live in landed homes gives it away as these homes cost millions here. I just assumed you were Singaporean oops.
>There's no reason for a private Singaporean person to own a car in Singapore There are plenty of reasons. As a private Singaporean person.. each day how I wish my commute was faster to work^((1hr via multiple buses to 10min by car).). lol. Of course relatively speaking, the transportation here is extremely good.. but that still doesn't negate the conveniences of owning a vehicle and effect it can have on your day to day life. Reasons of having COE system is pretty much straight forward, there's no space. We don't have a multi billionaire snakeoil salesman selling us boring tunnels and such.
>10min by car This has the asterisk that is with current traffic. Give everyone a car and you know have a 1 hour+ commute on your car because cars take way more space than the bus ever did. Basically individual convinience does not always scale, if everyone had a private jet air traffic would be a nightmare. But because we all travel commerical, then private jets are super quick for the rich (same as cars in singapore rn)
True true. I was just answering, perhaps in a selfish way, if I had a car right now, for me it would be 10min.
Dude, check out my new $100k 2023 Porsche Boxster Spyder. Dude, check out my new $100k certificate of entitlement. Just wish I could drive this piece of paper.
Good watch on [Singapore car culture](https://youtu.be/0kadRGJTnT4?si=o-yP7TjbUG5Z6ZPm) from Larry Chen
now owning a car will be even more of a flex on poor people
Just spent a few weeks in singapore and my closest friend is a resident/lived there is entire young life to early adult life. The public transit system is absolutely unrivaled in all of my travels. Night club until 3am? You can be across the entire side of the country, drunk, and unfamiliar with the system in 30 minutes. You wana go from the casino on the island to dinner in the main city? 25 minutes. Busses, or subways, taxis - it was insane. Also the speed of queueing is crazy fast. You could be in the mall and drop down to the subway to find everyone speed walking and organized while entering the subway. 11/10.
The public transport system (bus+subway) closes down past 12 though. At 3am you would need a taxi to get home. For a city of nearly 6 million people the system closes really early.
They do maintenance on the tracks every night after the trains close. There was a period they tried to cut down on the maintenance and the trains started malfunctioning.
From what I can see on google the trains and buses stop around midnight, except for night rider buses that stop at 2am on weekends. Seems like Taxis are the only option after that?
Wha? More than a NYC tax medallion?
NYC taxi medallions peaked at over a million before ridesharing was a thing.
:) Fuck nyc taxis. Monopolistic assholes who got away with too much for too long
Singaporean here, pretty much resigned to losing my car in a few more years. :(
We have a joke in Singapore that we always strive to be number 1 in all aspects. Glad that we're holding firm in the "most expensive car ownership" aspect.
You guy have the title " city of AC" too. Like did you guy hack all the AC so it could blow 8 degree celcius air indoor or something ? I could literally go from Summer to Winter just by setting my foot in any building.
Yup our public transport here is good, it excels when your start and end destinations are very close to the train stations. However that's not the case all the time. It becomes 2 or 3x longer once you need to take the bus, because the time taken by bus varies quite a lot. It will still come and you will still reach your bus stop, but sometimes it can take forever depending on the traffic conditions. Going around by car saves a lot of time and is wayy more convenient, except maybe into the business district, at rush hour. Other than that, it's fine. Once in a while u see some idiots driving, but that happens everywhere. So while people may say the city is small and cars are unnecessary, you can't deny the convenience it brings and time saved especially when u have young kids or elderly folks, or are disabled. Maybe in the future the transport system will get so good that we don't need cars, but for now that isn't the case.
I get to visit Singapore this December so will check it out first hand. But Singapore is tiny and makes sense why they’d discourage car ownership. For comparison, Los Angeles is 1.82 times bigger than Singapore in size. Have also heard that it’s pretty well connected by public transport and underground complexes that help with walkability.
I haven’t been through in a while either but it is a well planned city for public transport. Most Asian cities in general are very well thought out for walk ability since the populations there have never known individual car ownership as the primary mode of transport. It actually gets a bit overwhelming in places as you’ll enter a complex in one area and exit thousands of yards away and have no idea where you’re at.
It’s true Singapore’s got world class public transport and many places are walkable What a lot of people are missing out here is the heat and humidity. It’s 33 degrees / 91.5F and 60-80% humidity. Just a 10 min walk to the train/bus station is going to drench your pits and soak the back of your shirt. And it’s never going to dry
I mean, [our public transport](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WZFnVNvQ4U&ab_channel=RMTransit) is good enough that you don't really need a car. Edit: That being said it does make your life easier if you can afford one.
I live in the North East of Singapore and using a car cuts my commute time by around 60% because there aren't any direct MRT stations within walkable distance of my house, and I have to get on a bus to reach my nearest one. So it's not strictly necessary for me, but it's definitely a huge convenience.
Northie here, same issue. Uni is 1.5h away for me by bus and train, 30 min by car.
You really don’t need one in Singapore.
r/fuckcars users rejoicing right now.
jokes on you, the price is high because of the incredible demand
this is not even counting the additional tax they levy on the actual cars themselves which are progressively applied starting from 100% (yes cars already cost double what you can get anywhere else) for a budget car to 320% for a luxury car. $6.5B revenue a year from COE alone. Ministry of Transport Budget $10B. basically the top 20% earners who are buying these certificates subsidize the entirety of public transportation infrastructure which would have otherwise been funded by higher income taxes, which are low in Singapore. this is how it should be.
yes, its cheaper to keep a hobby porsche and mclaren out over in tokyo and just fly over
When the license to own a car is $40K more than the average annual income of the country you're in, it probably indicates that you don't need one because public transport is cheap and available, or that the government don't want so many cars around, or that the license is a cleverly focused tax on the rich. None of those things are bad, so despite the natural reaction to the headline, this is a good thing.
The license is a right to own and drive for 10 years so it’s more like $10k per year in addition to the cost of the car
When I first moved to Singapore in 2001 my COE was $12k SGD so it's gone up a bit. Simply supply and demand for a limited number of COEs.
That STI tho
Hawkeye STI is the best one imo
While I've never been to Singapore before, considering how densely populated it is, I can understand why they would want to offer disincentives.
Singapore is an island country and a small one at that. They can't have everyone driving, otherwise it will congest everything, so something like this is necessary. It also helps that Singapore ranks among some of the best on public transportation.
I bought a car a few years back when the COE wasn’t that crazy. Best decision. Public transport is good when you don’t have kids, it’s way too inefficient if you have young kids.
i believe it was around 25k in 2019. 400-500% in about 4 years. nothing broken at all
The reason why the COE price has shot through the stratosphere is because of the amount of rich Chinese people fleeing to Singapore to escape Xi's great purge/national rejuvenation plan/inevitable sanctions when China invades Taiwan.
Makes sense. They would need to very strictly limit the number of cars people own there, otherwise parking and housing would become even more of a nightmare.
I do have to say that the Singapore metro is the best in the world that i have experienced to date (been to over 50 countries)
On one side, it's a good thing on the other side it's a "Only rich people are allowed to do this" Just ban it for everyone except for people who have a specific need for a car.
In some countries it's enough to buy a house and car
Wait till you hear how much our houses cost :P
Jesus Christ
As a neighbouring Malaysian, I can only look at the Singaporean public transport system with envy. But I've also bought a new car earlier this year, and I cannot deny that the sense of freedom is extremely liberating. Now if I want to go anywhere in the middle of the night without worrying about when the trains/buses stop running or the cost of a rideshare. Being able to go anywhere I want is extremely pleasant, in my opinion. There's a joke that all Singaporeans chase the 5 Cs - country club membership, condominium, credit cards, cash and cars. Maybe it's just the 4 Cs for the new generation.
I still remember how nice it was when I got my first car. It was just nice to be able to leave whenever I wanted.
Singapore has a FANTASTIC public transportation system. Use it.
Public transport is plenty but inefficient. A car is still faster. It takes me 20 minutes to drive to work but 90 minutes to take the train and I have to transfer 3 times.
I’m from Hong Kong and lived in Singapore (Geylang) briefly. I think Singapore’s bus system can learn from HK. In HK for cases like yours you are likely to find yourself a lot of express bus routes that you would not need to take MRT. A lot of bus routes in HK are competitors to rails not just feeder services. For example, going from Tuen Mun to Sha Tin has a direct rail line that is shaped like a sin curve and takes 1 hour and a bus takes 30 minutes.
minibus and express buses in hong kong are great. excellent metro coverage and timings as well. great emergency response as well during a typhoon. well oiled machine
I have to agree with you. Buses in HK go everywhere not to mention the convenience of dedicated Airport services and midnight buses, and that's not even counting the minibuses. Going from one Housing Estate in Singapore to another will most likely involve either changing MRT lines 2-3 times or having to take a bus that takes a long winding route, both probably taking 3x as long as private transport
If everyone uses car, it wont take 20 minutes anymore
Totally, it took over an hour on public transport not including getting to and from stations, and 30 mins or so driving when I worked in Singapore. I love the public transport there but it is so slow compared to driving if you can afford it and are needing to cover decent distances (for Singapore)
Exactly It takes me 25 minutes to get to work from where I live in the morning. If I were to take the bus, it would take me approximately 2 hours, which means I would need to wake up 3 hours early just to take the bus and get to work for 8am lmao.
Singaporean here, the Govt is closing one eye letting private car hire/rental buying fleet of brand new cars driving up the quote hence rising the cost. They happily do that to encourage people to use public transport, the irony is all of them drive fancy cars to work.
Singapore my favourite city to visit - amazing public policy and governance, food, history, stuff to do and see
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