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Zero growth rate for cars and motorcycles extended for 3 years until Jan 31, 2025

SINGAPORE — The Land Transport Authority (LTA) will maintain the existing zero growth rate per annum for cars and motorcycles, and the 0.25 per cent growth rate for commercial vehicles until January 2025.

  • The authorities will maintain the existing zero growth rate per annum for cars and motorcycles until January 2025
  • This is due to both land constraints as well as the growing availability of alternatives such as public transport
  • Growth rates for cars and motorcycles had been frozen since 2018, in a bid to go car-lite
  • One expert said households with young children and elderly parents may still have a need for private vehicles

 

SINGAPORE — The Land Transport Authority (LTA) will maintain the existing zero growth rate per annum for cars and motorcycles, and the 0.25 per cent growth rate for commercial vehicles until January 2025.

The extension of this zero growth rate was previously until January 2022.

In a statement on Friday (Oct 15), LTA said that this is in view of Singapore’s land constraints and “competing land-use needs”, which means that vehicle population growth has to be tempered “especially as the number of vehicles on our roads draws near to one million”.

Public transport and other forms of commuting such as shared transport and active mobility modes are also more sustainable, LTA said.

For instance, the MRT train network will grow from about 245km presently to 360km over the next two decades, and by 2030, there will be 1,300km of cycling paths, up from 460km now.

The car and motorcycle population growth rate will be maintained at 0 per cent per annum, while vehicles under Category C — which comprises goods vehicles and buses — will maintain a 0.25 per cent population growth, until Jan 31 in 2025.

For goods vehicles and buses, LTA noted that they will not be easily substituted for businesses that rely on them without “significant changes in operations”.

“As such, we will maintain the current (growth rate) for Category C for now, to allow businesses more time to improve the efficiency of their logistics operations and reduce the number of goods vehicles and buses required.” 

LTA announced in August last year that it would extend the validity of the current vehicle growth rate until January 2022 due to the uncertainty over how travel demand patterns will evolve during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The growth rates of cars and motorcycles had been frozen since 2018, when these were cut from 0.25 to 0 per cent, in the authorities’ bid for Singapore to go car-lite.

Associate professor of economics Walter Theseira from the Singapore University of Social Sciences said that even though public transport and active mobility modes act as viable alternatives to private transport, this cannot be applied to everyone.

For instance, households with young children and older parents, and businesses dealing in logistics, may have greater need for private vehicles.

“Addressing those pain points is necessary to make sure that private vehicle ownership is felt to be a choice and not a necessity,” he said.

In its statement, LTA said that the average monthly Certificate of Entitlement (COE) quota between November 2021 to January 2022 across all categories is at 3,528, down from the monthly quota from August to October this year, which was at 4,659.

LTA said that the extension of the vehicle growth rate is not expected to significantly affect the supply of COEs, since the COE quota is determined largely by the number of vehicle de-registrations.

The authority added that the vehicle growth rate will next be reviewed in 2024.

Related topics

vehicle car motorcycle LTA transport COE car-lite

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