A major source of unhappiness amongst Singaporeans is the increasingly obvious conclusion that traffic congestion control policies are failing.
The problem we are facing is case of Not having enough roads in a certain place at a certain time; our main problem seems to be congestion going into the CBD areas and congestion coming out from the CBD areas.
What if we build a second CBD?
I am talking about Mandai here.
- It is served by SLE, which connects to BKE and KPE to the west and CTE, TPE to the east.
- It has 3 big satellite towns in the vicinity (Woodlands, Sembawang, Yishun) and another 2 big towns slightly further away (Chua
- It has a large swath of land that is not heavily built up. It consists of mainly forest, nature reserves, army training sites and farm lands. This makes it relatively easy for the Government to clear the land for re-development purposes.
- The area is large enough and therefore will be able to house enough people for it to become a true CBD.
Having a second CBD on the northern side of the island will mean traffic is no longer heading towards the south during morning rush hours but instead will spread out in both directions. The efficiency of roads such as CTE, BKE will be greatly enhanced as it carries traffic in both directions.
Infrastructure
The Government is an old hand at laying down the necessary infrastructure to build such a CBD. The current Marina South is a prime example. All the satellite towns are done in the same way as well.
In fact, with the right amount of money and time, the following infrastructure requirement should pose no special difficulties for the Government:
- Electricity grid
- Telecommunication
- Water
- Sanitation/ Waste treatment
- Roads within the new CBD.
But there is one major exception: Public transport infrastructure.
You cannot have a new CBD without a decent public transport infrastructure to go along with it.
If you ask people to use cars, you are defeating the purpose of setting up a new CBD in the first place. MRT lines will be good, but they will take 5 – 10 years to complete. So the only thing we have is buses. But they will not travel to the new CBD unless there is demand.
That’s where the latest LTA proposal to put out bus routes using tendering system becomes interesting. There is nothing to say that the Government cannot have a system whereby it subsidizes bus routes (by paying fixed sums to bus operators for it to carry out the bus service) initially so as to attract people to use the new CBD and recoup those subsidies through land sales in the new CBD later.
So to elaborate this further, a new suite of express bus services can be introduced that serves the new CBD from various satellite towns. These buses will make use of the expressways to reduce traveling time. The QOS of the bus services can be specified by the Government (e.g. 3 min/bus for rush hours. 5 min/bus for non-peak hours etc. Fare to be made comparable to existing bus fares etc). Bus operators can compete for these routes via the tender process. Initially, the Government will have to pay (i.e. negative tender value) to get these bus operators to serve the bus routes. But as the passenger volume picks up, the subsidy will disappear. The bus routes can be reviewed on a regular basis (by having short term tender contracts etc) to minimize subsidies.
Critical Mass
Another thing that is critical to ensuring the success of CBD2 is how to achieve critical mass. This is a chicken and egg problem. If you do not have enough people who use CBD2, it will not be attractive to new tenants and CBD2 will die a natural death.
But this is by no means an impossible problem. In fact the Government has done it many times with the building up of many HDB towns and is now building up
These are the policies that can improve the success rate of CBD2:
- Cheap land leases. Offer attractive incentive to those who take the plunge. Lease lands to the early adopters at an attractive price. This potential savings and rewards will compel many to make the move. If the Government is concerned about not fully realizing the value of the land, it can offer those lands in shorter lease periods (<50>
- Focus on specific sectors. Industries like to work in clusters. It will be difficult to convince companies to move to CBD2 if most of their peers are residing in CBD. So the idea is to focus on new sectors and sectors that do not have an overwhelming need to stay together and encourage them to move to CBD2.
- Lead the charge. The Government is itself a very big employer. It should redistribute some of its functions to CBD2 to signal the viability of the CBD2 project. A partial list of important Government functions that are clustered in or near the CBD include:
- HDB Hub (Toa Payoh)
- MHA (Novena)
- IRAS (Novena)
- MinEnv, NEA (
-
-
- SMRT HQ (City Hall)
- Supreme Court (CityHall)
- Finance Ministry (CityHall)
- MinLaw (CityHall)
- MTI (CityHall)
- Subordinate Court (Clarke Quay)
- MOM (Clarke Quay)
- MICA, MDA (
- MND (Tanjong Pagar)
- CPF (Tanjong Pagar)
- URA (Tanjong Pagar)
-
- Police Cantonment Complex (Outram)
-
- LTA (Tanjong Pagar, Little India etc)
If we can move some of these functions from CBD to CBD2, we can
- Free up space in CBD
- Lessen congestion in CBD
- Improve the critical mass in CBD2
Conflict of interest
There is one thing that may spoil the show though. From the Government’s perspective, there is a inherent conflict of interest in terms of developing a 2nd CBD. Simply put, after investing tens of billions of dollars to develop a new CBD, it may find itself with less revenue!
- There will be more land available for commercial purposes. This will dampen the prices of existing CBD land.
- There will be less revenue from things such as ERP as well.
The only way the Government will be able to rise above this is if it sees beyond pure monetary gains for itself:
- That a well rounded economy needs to cater to different sectors and not just sectors who can afford premium rents.
- An island that can truly support a 5.5 – 6.5 million inhabitant and a larger GDP in the long run.
- The lowering cost of doing business here, which hopefully will result in some great local enterprises being nurtured.
- The rise in quality of living and a happier population (Read: Not having to pay through the noses for transport).
Building CBD2 is a long term project; significant results can only be felt 10 – 20 years down the road. It is however absolutely crucial if
