CBD has too many parking space?

(Published on TODAY newspaper, Monday 16 Jan 2012, Page 14)

Well, he has a point here, taking empirical evidence from other cities. The thing is that he seems to have overlooked something that is uniquely Singapore.

First, cars here are so expensive that whether you drive or not, depreciation makes it not worthwhile to park the car at home. E.g.: A S$100K car depreciate by about S$25 a day, S$750 a month. Similarly, a S$200K car depreciate $50 a day, S$1500 a month.

So, when you don't use the car, you are like throwing money everyday into the sea. Here's the first reason why this will not work.

Second, Singapore weather. He talks about Zurich and Copenhagen, countries which nice cool weather where people don't mind walking in the outdoors. I know many people in Singapore drive everywhere they go because they couldn't stand not only the heat but also the humidity of Singapore weather which make one sweaty even before one reaches the destination.

The writer thinks that fewer people will drive if they think that there is less parking lots, but i beg to differ. I think that people will still continue to drive and if there is really no parking lot, then people may just park illegally along the road, which will congest the roads more, leading to an adverse consequent.

The PARK-&-RIDE scheme seems to be a good solution till today, where if you are working anywhere accessible by MRT stations, you can just simply park your car (cheaply @ S$3/day or S$45 a month) at a station outside the CBD and take a train into town. You avoid both the expensive parking charge as well as ERP.

However, the PARK-&-RIDE is only available at certain MRT stations and as the number of PARK-&-RIDE drivers increase, situations where they is little or no parking lots at Park and Ride carparks become common and ultimately, it causes a causal backfiring of the park and ride scheme.

Extending more carparks to be part of the pack-and-ride scheme may help. Some multi-storey carparks near Tiong Bahru MRT, Redhill MRT, Commonwealth MRT,  Lavender MRT can all be taken into consideration.