9. TRANSPORT POLICIES IN SINGAPORE Georgina Santos, Wai Wing Li and Winston T. H. Koh 1. INTRODUCTION Being an island city-state that measures 42 km (26.1 mi) East to West and 23 km (14.3 mi) North to South, Singapore has 3,149 km of roads (1,955 mi) for a population of about 4.2 million people and 707,000 registered motor vehicles in the year 2002. Since gaining independence in 1965, Singapore has enjoyed sustained and rapid economic growth, with an annual average growth rate of about 8% until the mid-1990s. Rising affluence has brought an increase in demand for personal motor transportation. In 1960, the level of motorisation in Singapore was 50 cars per 1000 people, similar to levels in the U.K. and France then, but was substantially higher than other developing countries and Japan, where the figure was 10 cars per 1000 people. By 1995, with a per-capita GDP of S$33,520 at 1995 prices (or US$19,154, at a 2003 exchange rate of US$1 = S$1.79), comparable to the levels in U.K., France and Japan, the level of motorisation in Singapore, at 105 cars per 1000 people, was about a quarter of the levels experienced in these three countries (Willoughby, 2000). Successfully managing congestion was considered an important part of the country’s efforts to attract multinational corporations to locate their operations in South-East Asia in Singapore. Like in other cities, urban congestion not only creates air and noise pollution, but also increases the cost of doing business. This was a serious problem for Singapore in the early 1970s, when traffic during the Road Pricing: Theory and Evidence Research in Transportation Economics, Volume 9, 209–235 Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0739-8859/doi:10.1016/S0739-8859(04)09009-2 209