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22 urbanDNA · Issue 4 / June 2014 urbanDNA · Issue 4 / June 2014 23

Singapore’s Race for Mobility Solutions

Singapore is a global business hub and one of the most highly urbanized territories on the planet. Due to its setting as an island city-state, efficient transportation is especially crucial for this Asian metropolis.

Text: Glenn van Zutphen

22 urbanDNA · Issue 4 / June 2014

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f you commute to work in Singa-pore on a weekday, there is a very good chance that public

transportation will be involved. In-deed, about 63 percent of all trips during the peak hours are made by bus or train; a total of 12.5 million journeys are made across the island every day on public transport. It’s astonishing to contemplate when you consider that the city-state is just 710 square kilometers in size and supports a population of 5.4 million. Furthermore, Singapore’s popula-tion is expected to top 6 million peo-ple in 2020. So how does a country with a growing urban population and limited physical space manage its mobility challenges?The Singapore Land Transport Au-thority (LTA) published its updated Land Transport Master Plan in 2013, setting out a vision for land transport in Singapore for the next 20 years. The Master Plan says that by 2030, eight in ten households will be with-in a ten-minute walk of a train sta-tion; 85 percent of public transport journeys (less than 20 kilometers) will be completed within 60 minutes, and 75 percent of all journeys during peak hours will be on public transport. The LTA developed the plan in re-sponse to an evolving environment over the past five years. Three key changes drove their conclusions: The population has increased expecta-tions of a better quality of life and correspondingly an improved travel

I experience; an increased demand for transport, driven by a larger econo-my; and greater population and tighter land constraints.

A Magnet for ResearchBehind the scenes, Singapore is be-coming a magnet for research into the handling of mobility issues through collaborations between the public and private sectors. Emilio Frazzoli is the Lead Investigator at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Re-search and Technology (SMART). He says it’s hard to find a better place to do this research. “Singapore has a very advanced technological infra-structure; they’ve been at the fore-front of technology in transportation and are willing to innovate.” He adds that the geographically small area and excellent infrastructure make it the perfect place to look for genuine solutions to its growing population. Meanwhile, the government is inte-grating a wide range of high-tech mobility solutions into the island’s urban plan to help manage these challenges.Singapore’s plan includes procuring and building additional Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) lines and extending ex-isting ones. Those lines are being outfitted with the latest technology to improve efficiency, safety, and pas-senger experience. This includes the Downtown Line 1, a driverless under-ground metro train, which began operations over its first phase in De-cember 2013. The 4-kilometer section with six stations and six trains uses a high-tech Siemens signaling sys-tem. Siemens is also supplying a me-dium-voltage traction power supply system for the driverless metro and will provide services such as project management, installation, testing, and commissioning. Energy generat-ed by the braking process will be gathered by inverters in substations and fed back into the medium-volt-age grid; it can also supply trains on other lines or elevators, escalators, and lighting for more energy efficien-cy and environmental sustainability. The first of its kind in Singapore, the Downtown Line will transport up to

LTA Master Plan 2013

• Singapore’s land transport vision for the next 20 years.

• By 2030, eight in ten house-holds to live within a ten-minute walk of a train station.

• 85 percent of public trans-port journeys completed within 60 minutes.

• 75 percent of all journeys in peak hours taken on public transport.

“ We see a future where we all get to more places faster and in greater comfort than before, as we enhance our rail, bus, cycling, and sheltered walkway networks, take steps to improve the quality of public transport services, and support new options such as car sharing. Under this plan, our goal is nothing short of transforming our daily journeys: We spend less time traveling and more time doing the things we want to do. Our traveling experience will evolve as activities such as running our errands, visiting our favorite places, or linking up with our family members and friends merge smoothly with our daily commute. For others, public transport or car sharing may become alternatives to owning a car.”Land Transport Authority of Singapore

Intelligent Roads

Aboveground, roads take up 12 per-cent of the land space in Singapore. Because there is so little land, the growth rate of the island’s vehicle population must be closely managed, since road-building opportunities will be more limited in the future. In response to this challenge, the city has pioneered the introduction of a variety of technologies to the roads, including one of the world’s first Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) sys-tems – tolls that vary according to traffic flows and work as a congestion charge. The ERP uses a short-range radio communication system to de-duct charges from smart cards in-serted in vehicles. Other intelligent elements include an Expressway Monitoring and Advisory System (EMAS) that alerts motorists to traffic

500,000 passengers per day over 42 kilometers when it’s completed in 2017. There will no doubt be addi-tional driverless trains by 2020 and 2030, when new train lines are slated to open:

• Thomson Line, Eastern Region Line, Tuas West Extension – These lines are part of the Land Transport Master Plans 2008 and 2013, and are currently in the planning or tendering phase.

• Cross Island Line – A line span-ning the breadth of the country, running from Changi Airport and the developing residential area of Punggol in the east to the indus-trial parks of Jurong in the west.

• Jurong Region Line – This line will serve the Jurong area in the west of the island.

• Downtown Line, Circle Line, and North East Line – All three lines will be extended to respond to land use plans and to fully realize the network effect benefits from the new lines that will be built.

• Singapore–Johor Bahru Rapid Transit Link – An engineering study is under way to determine the alignment and chosen method to cross the causeway to Malaysia.

• Singapore–Kuala Lumpur HighSpeed Rail – The initial feasibility study has been completed by S.P.A.D., the Land Public Transport Commission of Malaysia, which is currently reviewed by the Singa-pore authorities. The project is planned to open within this decade.

The visually stunning ION Orchard shopping mall is easily accessible via the Orchard station on the North-South Line of Singapore’s Mass Rapid Transit.

Emilio Frazzoli thinks Singapore is ideally suited for developing urban mobility solutions.

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accidents on major roads, and a GPS system installed in taxis, which moni-tors and reports on traffic conditions around the city. All information from the systems feeds into the Intelligent Transport System’s Operations Control Centre, which consolidates the data and pro-vides real-time traffic information to the public. Due in part to these measures, Singapore is one of the least congested major cities in the world, leading to recognition at the 2013 City Climate Leadership Awards, where the Intelligent Transport Sys-tem won the Intel-ligent City Infra-structure category, awarded by Siemens and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (see box, p. 29).

Smart CarsVarious innovative research activities are under way in the area of individ-ual mobility, with both short- and long-term outlooks. Take EVA, for instance – the first electric ve-hicle specifically designed as a taxi for tropical mega-cities. Researchers

from TUM CREATE – a joint electro-mobility research project between Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and the Technische Uni-versität München (TUM), supported by Singapore’s National Research Foundation – developed it from con-cept to demonstrator in just two years; it was presented in Tokyo in November 2013. The idea of using electric cars as taxis has so far been held back by the long downtime peri-ods for recharging. EVA’s superfast charging requires only 15 minutes to replenish its battery enough to cover

200 kilometers of travel – based on typical Singaporean driving patterns with air-conditioning switched on. With short, rapid recharge times, taxi drivers can now quickly recharge for the next part of their shifts during a break. Siemens – together with other part-ners – is collaborating with TUM CREATE in the area of electromobili-ty. In order to maximize the benefit of electromobility, it is necessary to introduce smart grid applications and smart electric vehicle-based transport solutions in a joint ap-proach. In this way, state-of-the-art electric vehicles can benefit from and

trigger investments in smart grids at the same time.While taxis, buses, and trains are part of the solution, there’s still the problem of travel time from the starting location (e.g., the commut-er’s office) to the start of the trans-portation network (e.g., the MRT sta-tion) and traveling time from the end of the transportation network to the final destination (e.g., the commut-er’s home). A collaborative project between SMART and the National University of Singapore (NUS) is de-veloping driverless cars that aim to resolve this “first- and last-mile problem.” Frazzoli ran the numbers and came to a stunning conclusion:

E-taxi: EVA, a demonstrator developed by TUM CREATE.

Compact city-state: Singapore’s 5.4 mil-lion residents live on an island of just 710 square kilometers.

“ Singapore has been at the forefront of technology in transportation.”Emilio Frazzoli, Lead Investigator Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART)

ION Orchard features 66,000 square meters of retail space on one of Singapore’s prime commercial sites.

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Driverless cars can satisfy the trans-port needs of the entire traveling population of Singapore within 15–20 minutes (during rush hour) using 300,000 autonomous, shared vehi-cles. The waiting time goes down to less than five minutes in nonpeak hours. While admitting that there will still be people who want to own a car for status, convenience, etc., he says this model combines the flexi-bility of private transportation with the sustainability and scalability of public transportation.Autonomous on-demand vehicles raise high hopes for improving safety on the roads, as most accidents occur due to human error. With an aging population, they help improve acces-sibility by providing mobility to peo-ple like the elderly, young people, and the physically challenged who cannot, should not, or prefer not to drive. Automated vehicles can also improve efficiency as they can

2014 City Climate Leadership Awards in NY

The City Climate Leadership Awards, jointly hosted by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) and Siemens, give award-winning cities international recognition for their outstanding perfor-mance and establish a plat-form for knowledge exchange between cities. More than 140 of the world’s major cit-ies – both C40 Cities and those in the Siemens and Economist Intelligence Unit’s Green City Index – were eli-gible to apply for the 2014 awards. Projects and initia-tives were also nominated by leading organizations in the climate and urban develop-ment sectors. An indepen-dent, seven-member judging panel consisting of former mayors, architects, and rep-resentatives of the World Bank as well as C40 and Siemens, nominates around 30 finalists and selects the ten winners. The awards cer-emony will be held on Sep-tember 22, 2014, in New York during NYC Climate Week.

“cooperate” to minimize the effects of congestion. The future of urban mo-bility is a magnificent challenge, es-pecially when viewed in light of eco-nomic, social, and environmental considerations. Innovative ideas and collaboration will be required to im-prove the safety, comfort, and time involved in getting individuals and goods to where they need to be, and when they need to be there, while si-multaneously reducing reliance on unsustainable energy associated with transportation.

Around the NeighborhoodWhen one looks at the situation in other Southeast Asian cities, Singa-pore has taken a clear lead in the race to research and develop traffic solu-tions. In many neighboring capitals, past notions of mobility are being re-defined by a frustrating immobility due to a glut of cars and motorbikes, combined with lagging

infrastructure. “Creative mobility so-lutions in Singapore are being active-ly and heavily invested in and devel-oped to address the city state’s needs,” says Ivan Small, a researcher at the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine who has studied mobility issues around the region. “They serve as models and sources of urban planning and technology development expertise to other cities in the region,” he con-cludes. Small also notes that Singa-pore’s work on mobility manage-ment – “particularly, green technologies pursued through col-laborations of industry, government, and academia as well as research on public transport availability, connec-tivity, and routing algorithms” – has been critical in securing local politi-cal support and is a possible export to other Asian countries. Vietnam, for example, is said to be following Singapore’s lead in developing a

Smart traffic control systems and the provision of real-time traffic information to the public are among the measures that have made Singapore one of the least congested major cities in the world.

better public transportation infra-structure, such as expanded bus net-works and a subway line due to start running in 2018. In addition to three successful rail lines – the BTS Sky-train, MRT subway, and Airport Rail Link – Bangkok’s municipal authori-ties are working to implement the ex-tensive Mass Rapid Transit Master Plan in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region.It is imperative to address the mobili-ty issues of cities across Southeast Asia. For now, Singapore is at the fore-front of research and test bedding innovative solutions. If collaborations like MIT’s SMART lab and TUM CREATE can achieve workable and scalable results, they will usher in a new era of mobility and forever change the way we get from point A to B.

Glenn van Zutphen has been working as a journalist for 26 years for the likes of CNN International, CNBC Asia, and ABC News Radio. He is based in Singapore.

Population growth is a challenge for Singapore. The city center already struggles with overcrowding: Commuters squeeze into an MRT East-West Line train at Paya Lebar Station.

“ Creative mobil-ity solutions in Singapore serve as mod-els for urban planning in the region.”Ivan Small, researcherDepartment of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine Ph

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