MODEL CITIES: ASIA

The Singapore/Hong Kong Success Stories And Their Implications For Developing Cities

BY JEFF KENWORTHY
Institute for Science and Technology Policy, Murdoch University

Photos by JEFF KENWORTHY

Both Singapore (population in 1990 of 2,705,115) and Hong Kong (population in 1991 of 5,522,281) have remarkably successful transit systems and very low car usage. Hong Kong's increase in per capita car use between 1981 and 1991 was only 146 km (compared to 2,584 km in Los Angeles) and its transit use increased by 104 trips per capita. Singapore had similar success. As in other cities, they face the dilemma of the automobile but are opting to provide more for transit than for the car.

Photo 1. The modern metropolis of Singapore.

Photo 2. Hong Kong and Kowloon from Victoria Peak.

In order to achieve this, Singapore and Hong Kong have introduced a range of strategies summarised in Table 4.4.

Table 1. Singapore and Hong Kong's strategies for overcoming automobile dependence.

The first strategy, city-wide planning, is given a very high priority (Wang and Yeh, 1993). The transit system in both cities is both fixed, rapid and comfortable (electric rail), and is also flexible and local (standard buses and minibuses). In the case of Hong Kong, ferries also form a small though important part of the transit system.

Photo 3. The mass rapid transit system in Singapore.

Photo 4. Buses are well integrated with rail in Singapore.

Photo 5. Buses in Hong Kong form an important part of the transit system.

Photo 6. Ferries still play an important role in Hong Kong's transport system.

This is supplemented in both cities by high levels of non-motorised transportation (mainly walking), in the dense, mixed use settings where the main component of many trips is a vertical trip in an elevator.

Photo 7. One of the many densely settled neighbourhoods in Hong Kong where walking is so important.

Cycling performs a very minor role in Hong Kong for topographical reasons and is presently small in Singapore, though major efforts are being made to increase it through cycling facilities such as bicycle parking areas at rapid transit stations and the development of shaded cycleways.

Central to the success of the Singapore/Hong Kong model is high density urban development that is closely integrated around the transit system. Singapore's basic urban structure plan shows a series of radial and circumferential mass transit and light rail lines with major and minor sub-center nodes developed at high densities around the intersection of all these lines (Kenworthy et al, 1994).

The success of both Singapore and Hong Kong in integrating development around their respective rail systems can be easily seen from the following two tables (2 and 4) which show high percentages of the city's total activities within walking distance of stations and the ease with which stations are reached either on foot or by transit.

Photo 8. High density residential mixed use development integrated around the Hong Kong rail system.

Photo 9. In Singapore, high density housing estates within walking distance of a rapid transit system are commonplace.

Table 2. Integration of land use with transit in Hong Kong.

Source: Donald (1993)

Table 3. Integration of land use with transit in Singapore

Source: Letter from Singapore MRT Ltd July 5, 1994 quoting Transit Link figures
and Introduction to "The MRT story", MRT Corporation, Singapore, 1988.

The densities required to achieve the above levels of transit-integration, as well as high levels of non-motorised travel, seem excessive to the majority of Anglo-Saxon perceptions, but are acceptable in Asian environments, particularly when they are associated with good planning that results in high levels of health and other quality of life indicators (Newman, 1993). Neither are these densities unheard of in some parts of the Anglo-Saxon world such as in central Toronto or Vancouver's West End and False Creek area, and are not generally as high as in Manhattan or central Paris.

The story of Singapore's successful transit system is not without its battles, nor is it without the support of other highly successful policies aimed at restraining car use. The advice from the World Bank and some American consultants in the 1970s was that it would be wrong to invest in an expensive, high profile, fixed rail facility; according to the World Bank all that was needed was to upgrade their buses. However, Singapore chose to go ahead with their rail system as they realised that buses alone do not offer a competitive service to the car and they would not be able to implement their transit-oriented city plan without a high capacity rail service linking their sub-centers both to the city centre and across the city in a series of circumferential rings. Buses it was realised, would not have the capacity to service such dense concentrations of activities without severe congestion problems and their stop environments would of necessity be much larger, dirtier and noisier places than electric train stations. Such environments would be unattractive places for the density of the envisaged development and the resulting intense pedestrian flows, as well as being physically harder to integrate than an underground or elevated rail station. Singapore's MRT service and integrated bus system has been highly successful in both economic and environmental terms since it opened in 1987. In 1990 the overall transit system in Singapore achieved a 15% operating profit.

Some of the groundwork for transit's success, as well as its ongoing achievements in Singapore, are due to Singapore's famous Area Licensing Scheme (ALS) introduced in 1975 to reduce morning peak commuting into the CBD, and its long history of steep vehicle taxes, including the more recent Certificate of Entitlement (COE) system which requires would-be car owners to bid for the right to buy a vehicle. The price of a COE varies continuously, but in early 1994 it was as high as $S63,000, on top of the car purchase price (The Straits Times, December 17, 1993).

The Area Licensing Scheme has been attributed with many benefits such as reducing the percentage of commuters driving to the CBD from 56% in 1975 to 23% in 1983 and increasing bus mode split from 33% to 69%. The traffic flow improvements achieved by this simple revenue producing scheme would have required $1.5 billion in road investment. Finally, car ownership models based on wealth were suggesting Singapore should have had over 300,000 vehicles in 1982, whereas it only had 184,000 (OECD, 1988).

Not surprisingly, the ALS has been both physically expanded and its times of operation extended to an all-day scheme (7.30am to 6.30pm). Through the COE system and other vehicle taxes, as well as the ALS, the Singaporean government has been progressively tightening the screws on car ownership in response to the pressures from growing wealth, but it has also been expanding the opportunities for transit and non-motorised mode use through continually expanding the MRT system and providing for bikes and pedestrians.

For example, separated bikeways are a part of the planning of New Towns to facilitate access to MRT stations and commercial areas within the towns. Bikeways are also planned for many roads. Pedestrian precincts, transit malls, malls, promenades and gallerias consisting of covered streets with hosts of shops, restaurants and cafes are occurring in the central area. Extensive greening of the city to moderate the harsh climate is an important part of pedestrian and bike plans (Urban Redevelopment Authority, 1991: p.39).

Hong Kong too has its story to tell with respect to developing an effective transit system, integrating development and restraining the automobile.

The intense pressure on available land in Hong Kong due to topographical constraints, and the potential for overwhelming congestion if the private car were to be unleashed, has meant Hong Kong's physical planning principles have always been strongly based on the need to create super-compact nodes of strongly mixed development in which people can access most local needs within a short walk. Now these nodes are mostly linked together by the MTR system so that longer trips do not require a car or a congested bus trip.

Photo 10. Super high density development in Hong Kong makes rapid transit absolutely essential.

Coupled with effective land use-transit integration, Hong Kong's traffic management is directed not at facilitating car use by creating quantum leaps in road capacity, but at optimising the existing road system. The success so far is evidenced in the fact that average traffic speed rose from 20 km/h in 1979 to 24 km/h in 1988 and again to 26 km/h in 1991 (Kam, 1993). Hong Kong has achieved such results through the following:

• Computerised Area Traffic Control (ATC)
• Transit priority measures - bus only lanes, bus-only streets bus-only turns etc.
• Developers are not required to provide parking in the core urban area according to the size of buildings, in recognition of good accessibility by transit and on foot.
• Relatively high car ownership and use costs which help keep a lid on rising ownership.

Many cities in the developing world are rapidly modernising with significant growth in car ownership and have put most of their transportation capital into new roads and parking, eg Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta and now the Chinese cities. Bangkok, for example, with a Gross Regional Product per capita in 1990 of only $US3,826, already had 199 cars per 1000 people, whereas Hong Kong with nearly 4 times the wealth ($US14,101) had only 43 cars per 1000 people, or one-fifth the car ownership rate.

Rapidly developing cities which have not put in place any physical or economic restraints on traffic, have not built high quality transit systems, and have not protected their traditional forms of non-motorised mobility from the onslaught and dangers of motorised traffic, have huge traffic problems as well as associated environmental and social problems (Poboon et al, 1994; Poboon and Kenworthy, 1997). For them there is the obvious solution - to implement transit systems in conjunction with restraints on car ownership and use on the model of Hong Kong or Singapore, and to begin recommitting themselves to traditional forms of non-motorised mobility which are so effective in dense, mixed use settings with short travel distances for many trips. The high density, and in many cases pre-existing linear form of development in many third world cities, is more than adequate to justify the construction of high capacity transit systems.

Photo 11. Singapore has not permitted its excellent road system to clog up with cars. Economic constraints on cars and a world class transit system keep the roads functioning well.

Many proposals and plans for rail transit systems exist in these cities which have huge fleets of often very dilapidated buses and other smaller collective modes such as tuk-tuks, jeepneys and a variety of mini-buses. Although essential for local transit services, these modes cannot cope with passenger demand and cannot compete in speed terms in the constrained, traffic-dominated streets.

Photo 12. Buses stuck in traffic in Bangkok. Singapore and Hong Kong have effectively avoided this phenomenon.

As incomes and consumer expectations rise in developing cities, these inferior modes of transit cannot compete with the car (or indeed motor cycles) in terms of comfort or general passenger appeal. Many residents are thus immediately lost to private transportation for a majority of trips as soon as they can afford to change over, whereas a competitive transit system reduces the need to make this transition to private transportation.

New rail transit systems (usually associated with finance that is from both private and public sources), therefore offer the only true rapid transit option across the city. Based on the models of Singapore and Hong Kong, the results of implementing rail systems in the rapidly motorising cities of the Third World, (preferably in conjunction with some physical and economic disincentives to car ownership and use), is likely to be spectacularly successful, particularly because their land use is already transit-oriented (Poboon et al, 1994). However, it is important to also address the rapidly declining and increasingly hostile conditions for pedestrians and cyclists in developing cities because, as shown in the case of Singapore and Hong Kong (Tables 2 and 3), most transit trips in dense environments involve pedestrian access at least at one end.

Photo 13. A rapid transit system in Singapore showing potential for dense development right next to the station.

Photo 14. A system of walkways in Singapore leading from a rapid transit station to a high density housing estate.

The key problem for transit systems in developing cities seems to be the lack of a politically powerful and well-coordinated city planning system which could approve and implement the building of quality, fixed transit infrastructure. The participation of the public in city planning is also essential, particularly when the city becomes stuck in an inappropriate Western paradigm as it has in cities like Bangkok (Kingsley, 1993). An important part of the solution is thus to more adequately express community values through the planning system and to cease importing outdated and discredited western planning techniques such as traditional four-stage land use-transportation models which generate self-fulfilling prophecies of roads and congestion in endless cycles and which do not even consider that non-motorised modes exists in such environments (Poboon and Kenworthy, 1995; Kenworthy, 1995).

The solutions are on their doorstep and involve a three-pronged attack along the lines of Singapore and Hong Kong:

• commitment to building up quality transit, preferably rail,
• some preparedness to introduce parallel physical and economic restraints on private transportation which support the investment in transit preferably before the decision to build transit, and
• to invest in relatively inexpensive improvements in the environment for pedestrians and cyclists.

Photo 15. A medium density housing area in Singapore showing pedestrian facilities and provision for children.