Electronic road pricing (ERP) became operational in Singapore in September 1998. It replaces the manual congestion pricing schemes in the CBD and expressways. This paper outlines the key events in the development of congestion pricing since June 1975. It describes other pricing measures to manage road travel demand. These are the Additional Registration Fee (ARF) and the Vehicle Quota System (VQS) for new vehicles. The revenue from congestion pricing is about S$0.l billion per year and that from VQS is about S$1.5 billion per year. This paper also derives some price elasticity values with respect to congestion tolls from empirical data. Congestion pricing appears to be twice as effective as petrol price increases in reducing car travel, and would be only similar to petrol price in inducing mode shift to public transport. The balancing of fixed costs imposed on motorists, such as the VQS premium and registration fees, and usage costs such as congestion tolls, is a complex issue. ERP tolls would have to be much higher than the current toll rates if they are to replace VQS completely and maintain the same total revenue. (a).
Samenvatting