Young Singaporean still want to own cars

Read:

https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/young-singaporeans-still-want-own-160000929.html

The article talk about 1) poor public transport reputation, 2) comfort of not using a car 3) financial "im-savviability"


Efficiency is probably the basic need of transportation. People thinking (especially going to work in the morning) are that "I dont care what I am in as long as it get me to work on time" mentality. MRT, Bus, Car, bicycle - anything that can get me to work on time, secondary-ly anything that can delay me from leaving the house (yet get me to work on time), anything that reduce my time travelling is a good, preferred mode of transport.

The train conceptually is a good concept for the above points, especially for those living far from their work place. Get on the train and it usually takes you to your destination in 30 to 45 mins. Your journey is limited to this timing only if you are living one of the train stations and your work place is also at another train station (that is to say almost zero travelling time from station to workplace).

Unfortunately, most people live 1-3km away from the nearest train station and hence they have the following choices to get to the train station before the 30 to 45 mins ride.

• Take a bus from their house to the train station (most common)
• Taxi / Uber / Grab to the train station (most comfortable)
• Walk to the train station (if not too far)
• (Electronic) cycle / scooter / hoverboard / skateboard to the train station (getting increasing common) 
• Drive to the train station (probably most costly if parking cost is included)
• Get a family member or friend to drop you at the train station  

The first choice of taking a bus is most common because of its relatively low, almost zero cost. However, you run a risk of waiting longer (compared to the other options) especially when the buses are not on schedule or when the buses are too crowded and you are not able to board the bus. The same waiting time applies to the taxis when you try to flag one along the road.

The last 4 options eliminates the waiting time and is something that i want to talk about more in details, linking us back to the article of why young Singaporean still want to own cars.

First, walking.  Well, if you don't mind a bit of exercise, dont mind sweating, don't mind using some energy early in the morning and your house is not too far from the train station, it is good choice for you. However, most of us are wearing our formal attires (shirts, pants, skirts, blouse) and its probably not a good idea to get any of these attire wet first thing in the morning before we start work. A car will be good, even if I were to drive it and park at the mrt station)

Really? If you have a car, will you just drive to the MRT station and squeeze in the train to work? What about the distance from the station to the office? Will you want to get yourself wet from sweat at the time you step into office? So...(its obvious which you will choose)

I know at this point, some may argue about the cost of driving (petrol, erp, parking) on top of cost of owning the car. This is especially so when the you work right in town and start work at the end of the peak hour (9am). Peak hour slow traffic, ERP at the highest rates...not to mention the sky high parking charges you pay per day or per month.

Of course, if money is not an issue to you, the only thing that you need to endure is the peak hour slow moving traffic. In fact, you would suddenly wish that ERP charges are higher than the already high charge so that people will avoid the ERP gantry and hence not be driving beside you.  To these people whose money is 'unlimited', life is always great in Singapore. Tell you what, you should get a chauffeur to drive your Rolls Royce and eliminates the stress of driving too.

For the average man on the street, its moving back to re-exploring the choices.

Alas, we are left with 1 option: E-cycle / scooter / xxx-boards to the station.  Its seems to be a great idea because being electronic, these scooters or bicycles doesn't require must effort to keep it moving and its moves relatively quickly compared to walking. You reach the station in less than half the time compared to if you walk, probably uses much less energy and there is not waiting time involved. The scooters (not the bicycles) can also be taken along with you to continue the journey when you alight from the train. Can see why this is getting increasing popular with the layman.

However, as its is not a car, it is still subjected to the elements of the weather and you could also be stuck behind a slow moving pedestrian trying to occupy the whole pedestrian path. And the e-vehicle are good for the last kilometre (mile) commuting, not the whole journey. And you face the same problems of all other train commuters too. Train breakdown, not able to board the train, squeezing like sardines, just to name a few.

Hence, from the above discussion, the group of people who has the least inconvenience is not someone with an e-scooter, but someone with a car (and chauffeur) and with money not an issue for him / her. It's an aspiration of the best and young people are working towards it.

Smove Car sharing

Firstly, to clarify, this is not a sponsored post. Just want to share because i find it worthwhile. 

As with my previous post in March 2015 (view it here) , I never liked car sharing because of 2 main reasons, one - the limited free mileage and two - the need to return the vehicle to the same location.

Smove car sharing totally addressed this 2 issues spot on for me.

The company started out as with a pure electric car fleet before switching to the current fleet of hybrid Prius-Cs. Their system is simple. Pay a one-time fee of $19 (See how you can get a rebate to waive it off below) and start driving at $5 per 15 mins. No petrol or mileage or other hidden cost.

One of Smove Prius-C 

(Image taken from smove.sg)

So $20 per hour isn't exactly cheap...I hear you but it does offer you the flexibility of renting for less than an hour. Say half an hour or 2 hours 15 mins and you are really paying for the time you are in the car and not for time when the car is parked at the carpark.

I'll be honest with you, having joined a few previously, the above reason isn't enough to make me want to join another car sharing scheme. What's alluring me to join is this:

You can collect a car at a location and return it at another location. 

WOW! That makes sense for me. Let me tell you a place which I like to go but am always put off by taking public transport there > IKEA Alexandra. It's nowhere near a train station and for bus services only 2 comes from Redhill mrt and 1 comes from Queenstown mrt and they are not really frequent.

Now I can spend $5, take the car at Commonwealth MRT (one of their locations) and return it at Anchorpoint (another of their location). Then I just cross the road. I can even take up to 4 friends with me and I don't have to pay a single cent for parking. That's what I called flexible.

And, what's more I checked with Smove, as they are using very fuel efficient hybrid cars, the Prius C,

They does not have mileage limits on their cars

So no matter how far i drive,  my cost is fixed at $20 per hour.

Yes, I hear you say that how far can I drive in half an hour or an hour? But what about their 'package deals':

Weekdays (Mon till Fri): 10am to 5pm at $60. That's 7 hours for the price of 3 hours. 

Weeknights (Mon till Thu) 6:30pm to 8:30am at $40. Drive off from a station near your office and return next morning you come back to office.

On times like weekends starting from Friday nights and outside the above timings, it's still at an rather affordable $90 per 12 hours or $130 per 24 hours. Remember this is the actual amount you have to spend (except for ERP and carparks). No petrol cost, no hidden cost, no variable cost and comprehensive insurance is covered. 

Check them out their website at Smove.sg. Click on this link and get $20 credit from Smove while promotion lasts. That means its more than enough to offset the one time fee and there is no joining fee.

Something interesting - The whole time you have the car, there is no car key. To unlock the car, you simply tab your pre-registered EZlink card at the device next to the IU and the car will unlock itself. To lock, tab the card again. To end your trip, lock the car and send an SMS to Smove to end your booking.

Tab EZLink card to unlock and lock

(Image taken from smove.sg)

So far they have their locations mainly at the south-western side of Singapore but I was told that they will expand so we look forward to that.

Car Sharing in Singapore

I am not a big fan of car sharing after signing up for a few scheme a few years ago. And the reasons are obvious.

1) First, it is the limited mileage - Most, if not all, car sharing scheme pay for your petrol but limit your mileage to like around 10km per hour or 30km per overnight. For people like me, if I want to use a car overnight, a trip from my home in the north to town and back will be more than 30km. That's excluding running other errands (and of course you would when you have a car at your disposal)

What happens after you exceed the limit, you are charged $0.40 per km. So either you just drive your car around the neighbourhood, which is kinda impossible for me, or pay an additional fold for the 'optional' mileage charge.

I give you an example.  Say a particular car sharing scheme I am enrolled in offers me overnight usage for $30 per night from 6pm to 8am and give you 30km free mileage, thereafter to be charged at $0.40 per km.

Say collection at Toa Payoh. So i drive from Toa Payoh to Tiong Bahru (12km) to pick up my wife. Then we go City hall for dinner (4 km). Then after that we go pick up something at MBS (5km) and then we head home to Woodlands (30km). Next morning, I drive from home to return the car to Toa Payoh. (15km). Total 66km. Exceed: 36km. Cost: $14.40. Total Cost: $44.40

Trust me, that's a typical night mileage and not exaggerated. When you have a car, you may want to go a few more places like our parents house, more errands and such. That's because there are some things that you will leave to do when you have a car and in the end you may even plan a trip from town to Punggol to collect something from a friend before you head home.

2) Returning at the same location -  As with all car rentals, due to logistic arrangement, for car sharing, we need to return the car back to the same location. It's fine for rental because you have at least 24 hours to run your errants and return the car. For car sharing, you have an hour or two and you have to do your stuffs and get back to your location where you took your car. Doesn't make sense right?

Although it is a norm for car rental companies and car rental companies usually have staffs to receive you when you return the car (the staffs need to check for damage as well). However, for car sharing, as most of the system is computerised when returning the car is nothing more than sending a message to the system, why can't something be done to improve on this?


Update: 27 April 2015

Read my new post on Smove car sharing, a totally new concept that redefine car sharing in Singapore.

Will you cycle to work in hot, sunny, wet Singapore?

Read:
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/10-ideas-to-make/1427468.html?cid=FBSG

With the highs of COEs and heavy traffics on the road as well as on the MRT trains, would you switch to cycling to office?

For me, cycling, NO.

Firstly, my house to office is about 30km and even if I travel at average 30kmh, it will need exactly one hour for me to reach office. And ask any cyclist, to maintain 30kmh and above speed isn't really a easy feat. Trust me.

Secondly, in hot humid Singapore, even if you manage to average 30kmh in the morning, you are likely to end up sweating when you reach office. So unless you have a shower facility at your office or unless you are a gym instructor or a life guard, it's likely you're going to work in sweat-stained skin.

Thirdly, Singapore laws states that you have to ride on the road (not pavement) with the fast moving car driven by anxious, kan cheong, impatient drivers (you get the meaning), so that will put me in a dangerous, to which, sorry, I am not willing to take this risk, not when I am travelling at 20kmh and they are travelling at at least 70kmh.

There is one thing, however, that lure me back to the 2 wheel machine - the electric-ation of bicycles and the introduction of electric skate scooter.

On the electric bicycles, the inconvenience of point 1 and 3 above stays the same but it kinda solves the problem state in point 2. If you do not need to pedal or only pedal when necessary, you are likely to excrete less sweat and hence more likely to reach the office dry (or drier than taking a normal one).

The electric scooters are the interesting ones because they allow for partial journey transportation. Part of my whole journey I ride of the e-scooter and then I simply fold it up and take a train (with it, of course) and then I fold down and continue my journey on the scooter again. Something you cannot do with an electric bicycle. This is extremely good for people who need to walk / take a bus to the mrt station and walk / take a bus from the mrt station to the destination.

Riding to office from home is out for me, but I am still keeping my options open on the electric 2 wheelers to run errands nearby my house or perhaps at the maximum go to the next town.

COE Categorisation - is something wrong, LTA?

VW Passat with its 1390cc engine and 122bhp goes into Cat A

in the current LTA COE categorisation system. 

(Image credits to its owner)

CarBuyer Singapore ran this article on Sept 2 "How to 'fool' the LTA" on getting premium cars like Merc and BMW into mainstream 'Cat A' category.

Read:
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/fool-lta-143020130.html

Previously, LTA COE system only factor of consideration is the engine cc. Vehicle at and below 1600cc will fall under Category A while cars more than 1600cc will fall under Category B. Simple as that.

However,  due to improvement in technologies, large cars like VW Passat, Audi A4 all introduced smaller cc engine but with larger power output. Hence more cars can get into Cat A (Cat A price is usually lower) and benefit from the lower COE. LTA reacted to this and recently added an additional criteria - a car has to be equal or less than 1600cc AND equal or less than 130bhp in order to be classified under Cat A.

Yet, within the article car manufacturer Merc and BMW managed to 'fool' LTA by introducing lower cc lower output cars so that their cars are able to fit Cat A criteria once again. And we are taking about cars like Merc C-class and Volkswagen Passat, some are cars that goes head to head with Toyota Camry, a true 2.0litre and above sedan.

A large triggering factor to this trend will be that since manufacturer charge premium prices for their cars, they have the additional profits for the freeplay which could mean changing another engine to developing entirely a new model to suit the criteria, any criteria that LTA sets.

To make Cat A truly 'mainstream' and to have a fairer, LTA should go right into the heart of the question and categorise using the PRICE of the car. Price before COE or even OMV should be used to categories COE (and IMO, road tax as well). If a manufacturer wants to get into Cat A, it will have to drop its price to a certain level which due to the cost of premium cars, they are not likely nor have the motivation to do so unless COE goes sky high for Cat B and rock bottom for Cat A.

Comments on Sky High COE

I had been reading with much interest the suggestions that people are giving in contrast to the sky-high COE prices today.

As time of writing this post, COE for CAT B 1600cc and above is at $91,000, just marginally shy of the $100k market.

One common suggestion that stands out is the reduce / modify / or even abolish the entire COE system and transfer the cost from owning a car to using a car. That is cars should be priced according to market forces and they should be no government intervention (apart from the import tax) to deter people from buying the car.

However, once the owner of the car drives the car say into town, he/she will need more charges than the current charges now. And since they are paying less in installments, they have a choice of spending the money saved to drive into town or save the money and choose an alternative form of transport.

Thus the rationale should be that the person who parked his/her car most of the time in the carpark should pay the least while the person who drives everyday, especially into congested area should be made to pay the most.

If you observed that people are shunning ERPs for $2 or $3 per time they pass through the gantry, I don't see why a higher charge will not deter the average motorists to drive into town and contribute to congestion.

In Singapore, a $120k (inclusive of COE) Toyota Vios depreciates around $40 a day. Adding up other fixed cost like insurance and road tax to average out to be about $5 per day, making it about $45 a day. Isn't this one significant reason why people cannot not drive each day as whether one drive or not, the $45 is still incurred (obviously you need to pay more than $45 when you drive as the variable costs comes in)
For the same car, less than $60k COE,  it becomes $20 depreciation a day, $25 with all fixed cost, doesn't this figure make it more feasible for one to leave the car at home the whole day or just use the car at night with the option to use the car whenever necessary?

I think that making people give up driving is a far more effective idea than making people giving up their cars. To many, if not all, there will be some occasions where you will need to drive, such as Chinese New Year, Hari Raya, family gatherings, even just to drive out for suppers etc. As these events happen mainly on weekends and public holidays, out of the peak hours and peak areas, they hardly cause serious congestions.

Another good suggestion that I want to highlight here is to ballot for COE. The argument is that now with the sky high prices, it only allows the rich people to buy 2 or 3 cars while depriving the privileges to those whom really need a car: E.g.: Parents with children or people with elderly parents or people who need to fetch people who are not-so-mobile.

This way, it is a fairer system which does not deprive one of owning a car when you need it

Steep COE prices: Balloting fairer and cheaper

IN THE light of the unhappiness over soaring certificate of entitlement (COE) prices of late, I question the wisdom behind the system of car ownership in Singapore.

The stated purpose of COEs is to limit car ownership and, hence, ease traffic congestion. The outcome has struggled to match the goal.

The high COE prices indicate that the system influences who buys a car - those who can afford it - more than it limits car numbers.

This is obvious from the fact that the Government has to intervene by reducing the annual vehicle growth rate to 0.5 per cent come August, from 1.5 per cent currently and 3 per cent before 2009. ('COE prices up because economy is doing well, says Lui'; Monday)

The number of cars sold can at most match the number of COEs available, regardless of the COE price. This means it is unnecessary to have a price beyond an administrative fee required to run the system, which is meant to control car ownership and not generate revenue.

If important aspects like housing and education can be subject to balloting, surely a system can be designed to ballot for cars.

In hindsight, the unintended knock-on effect of high COE prices outweighs its limited success so far.

For the convenience of owning a car, the average family is saddled with a debt of tens of thousands of dollars - money that can improve its quality of life in many other ways.

Most people pay for their cars in instalments, reducing personal savings and spending power over several years.

If they were to divert a part of that money towards retail, education, health care and such, that would surely do Singapore a lot more good.

Chan Tau Chou

(Taken on straitstimes.com, published 19 Apr 2012)

My comments: 

I agree. I think it makes sense rather than people spending unnecessary money just to buy a piece of paper which depreciates. There are many ways to control vehicle population rather than just making people Pay and Pay (sounds familiar...).Deterrence should also be implemented to people who have access to more than one car (although I believe identifying them will not be easy)

Also found and extracted this below passage from www.tremeritus.com which the writer has, I believe, very accurately described the current situation: 

"The main problem with the COE system it allocates a scarce resource based on a person’s ability to pay rather than his needs. A middle income parent who has to ferry his children to school and take his parents to hospital can be out-bidded by a multi-millionaires’s son who uses the car for dates and clubbing. The disadvantage of such a system is it causes an ever widening gap of unfulfilled demand among those with the greatest need for a car. In Singapore, where the income gap is so wide, over time more and more COEs will just go the rich rather than people who need it."