An autonomous vehicle at Resorts World Sentosa on July 12, 2024. The authorities in Singapore began studying self-driving vehicles from as early as 2014. - ST/ANN
SINGAPORE: Singapore is poised to make a big push for self-driving vehicles to be deployed across the island in the next five years, to strengthen the public transport network.
It is a key plank in Acting Transport Minister Jeffrey Siow’s plan to make public transport more attractive by reducing journey times to work, especially for those living in Housing & Development Board (HDB) estates farther from the city centre.
This comes more than a decade after Singapore first started testing self-driving technology.
“It relieves our public transport system of one key constraint, which is manpower,” Siow said. “And it will add to the range of options that people have in HDB estates.”
In a wide-ranging interview with reporters on June 11 – less than three weeks into his new role – Siow laid out a vision of deploying smaller-capacity driverless vehicles “fairly extensively” on fixed routes within HDB estates.
These routes can be changed as needed, with self-driving minibuses and shuttles taking people to transport nodes during peak hours, and then places such as polyclinics or community centres during off-peak times.
“I think that will be a significant addition to our public transport network and the technology is already here,” Siow added.
He pointed to San Francisco in the US, where Waymo robotaxis have become ubiquitous, and Guangzhou in China, which he plans to visit at the end of June to see the development of self-driving vehicles there.
Siow’s priority is to reduce public transport journey times to work, especially for estates farther from the city centre, such as Tengah, Punggol, Jurong West and Pasir Ris.
He wants to do so by making HDB estates more walkable and increasing the density of bus networks – plans that he shared during an earlier doorstop interview in his Brickland ward in Chua Chu Kang Group Representation Constituency.
However, introducing new bus services is not straightforward, he noted.
Bus drivers need to be recruited and trained, which can take six months to a year, Siow said. There is also a need to buy buses and build depots and interchanges.
“All of us want... more bus services, more frequent buses. But behind every bus, there are two, two and a half, maybe more bus drivers, and it’s just very difficult to get,” he added.
The authorities had also considered minibus services, but the maths did not work out when a driver was added to the equation, Siow said.
This is where smaller autonomous vehicles will make a difference, he noted.
The deployment of driverless vehicles will help reduce the time it takes for people to get from their homes to the MRT station or bus interchange – the so-called first and last mile – which Siow said is not so efficient today.
This is a key reason why public transit travel times can be two to three times longer than a private car ride in some cases.
Siow aims to halve that gap.
Reducing public transport travel times to the city will create a virtuous circle, he said. “Once you do that, the demand for private transport would be more balanced... public transport would be more viable and attractive, and we should put our focus on that.”
Calling self-driving technology a “game changer”, Siow said that if autonomous vehicles become a reality here, the dynamics of driving could shift considerably.
“It may make less sense for you to drive your own car,” he added.
Siow said this will have “interesting implications” for how Singapore approaches private vehicle ownership, and, by extension, the certificate of entitlement system. “That’s maybe a further bit down the road, but I think it is worth really thinking about it.”
The authorities in Singapore began studying self-driving vehicles as early as 2014. A number of trials were done, but none made significant inroads.
But as the technology matures in places like China, a second wind has emerged. The Land Transport Authority (LTA) recently closed a call for proposals to trial autonomous buses on selected public bus routes from mid-2026.
Siow said it would take some time to procure the driverless vehicles and figure out implementation details in the initial phase.
“We are working out the plans... But, in very short order, I think you will see very interesting happenings on this front,” he said.
In the short term, there will need to be a safety driver on board autonomous vehicles. “In the longer term, it really depends on how the industry evolves,” Siow noted.
Siow was also asked about LTA’s 2040 goal of creating 20-minute towns and a 45-minute city, and whether it has become more challenging to do so with new towns and housing projects sprouting up.
A 20-minute town is one where all journeys to the nearest neighbourhood centre using public, active or shared modes of transport can be completed in less than 20 minutes.
A 45-minute city aims for nine out of ten peak-hour journeys on those modes of transport to be completed in 45 minutes or less.
In response, Siow said the target of a 45-minute city was meant to be a “stretch goal” to guide the planning of public and private transportation.
In the meantime, the authorities are close to achieving their shorter-term aim of having eight in ten Singapore households within a ten-minute walk of an MRT station – a target that will be supported by upcoming rail lines such as the Jurong Region Line (JRL) and Cross Island Line (CRL).
The JRL will open in phases from 2027 to 2029, while stage one of the CRL will be ready in 2030, with the remaining two stages slated for service in the 2030s.
“We have a good system. It is not perfect, but in terms of what we can achieve in getting people from one place to another, I think it has done a relatively good job,” Mr Siow said.
“We can do a lot more, and we will do a lot more.” - The Straits Times/ANN
