Metro helps reduce emissions through personal car ownership in Singapore

Providing convenient metro infrastructure is a solution to promote reduction of car ownership – one of the main factors causing road traffic to emit millions of tons of greenhouse gases in Singapore. This has been proven by professors and graduate students at Singapore University (NUS) and Tongji University (China) with the Circle Line as their chosen research route.

This line operated from 2009 to 2011, and is the fourth metro line in Singapore. Circle Line is nearly 36 km long through 30 stations, connecting MRT lines leading to the city center.

Sharing the research “Can subways help reduce private cars” at an urban science conference, Ms. Dai Fangzhou, postdoctoral researcher at NUS, said the team used data from a survey more 73,000 individuals and 20,000 households in 2008 and 2012 for testing. The above two timelines are the time before and after the Circle Line metro line fully operates. This data is supported by the Land Transport Authority and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART).

According to research results, the proportion of people using electric trains increased by 10.4%, while the number of private car users decreased by 5.3%. People who live and work near train stations tend to reduce their need to own cars than those who live nearby but work far away.

The number of private cars in Singapore has also gradually decreased since 2014, according to data from the National Land Transport Authority.

In addition to developing the public transportation system, the Lion Island nation has a series of actions to reduce personal car ownership. The 1971 Singapore Concept Plan called for a deceleration of motorization. In addition, high taxes and fees to own a car and traffic congestion charges are financial tools that affect people’s desire to own this type of vehicle.

Switching from driving to walking, cycling or green transport is an important move to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the road transport sector, according to Singapore’s Ministry of Transport.

Calculating vehicle emissions per kilometer traveled, a small and medium-sized car emits about 144g CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per person. While with electric trains, direct emissions are zero, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Singapore’s road transport emissions peaked in 2016 at 7.7 million tonnes CO2e, then gradually decreased to 6 million tonnes by 2022.

To further reduce emissions, the country’s Ministry of Transport is taking steps to green public transport activities, with metro lines and stations built towards sustainable, environmentally friendly goals. At the same time, the country aims to increase the rate of people taking the subway during rush hours to 70% by 2030.

Singapore is in the top 20 countries and territories with the lowest emissions rate per person in the world, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2022. This country aims to target emissions net zero by 2050.