Ministry of Transport

The Minister for Transport (Mr Khaw Boon Wan): Our mission is to connect Singaporeans from doorstep to destination in Singapore and to the rest of the world.

Our aviation and maritime sectors are the lifeline of Singapore's economy. They provide the global connectivity needed by companies and keep Singapore at the heart of international business and trade. They ensure our attractiveness as a global city, facilitating the flow of people, goods, services and ideas. They contribute about 13% of our GDP and more than 330,000 jobs.

We cannot take this for granted. We face increasing competition from new hubs, market restructuring and alternative flight and shipping routes. We face strong headwinds, such as the heightened security environment and the global economic slowdown, which will also affect the growth of our airport and seaport and, hence, the livelihoods of Singaporeans.

Within Singapore, we have laid the foundations for a public transport system that is reliable, convenient and affordable. We aim to have three out of four commuters take public transport as their main mode of travel by 2030 and at least 85% by the 2050s. We will support this shift by making it much easier to walk and cycle in Singapore, since this is how almost every public transport commuter gets to the MRT station or bus stop today. With safe and comfortable facilities, we hope, too, that Singaporeans will increasingly walk or cycle to neighbourhood amenities. Technology and innovation, such as self-driving vehicles, the sharing economy and new urban designs, will also support a new mobility paradigm that does not revolve around the private car.

Indeed, a car-centric transport system is not sustainable in land-scarce Singapore. Already, one million private vehicles ply the roads today and 12% of our land is used for roads. A growing number of cities are also decisively moving their transportation model away from private cars, for an improved urban environment and higher quality of life. We should, too.

We will further strengthen the competitiveness of our air and sea hubs.

To this end, we are undertaking major infrastructure projects. Changi Airport Terminal 4 and Jewel Changi Airport are on track to commence operations in 2017 and 2019 respectively, while Pasir Panjang Terminal Phases 3 and 4 will grow our seaport capacity by more than 40% come end-2017. In the longer term, the first set of berths of the new Tuas Terminal will be ready by 2021. Changi Airport Terminal 5 is expected to be completed in the second half of the 2020s while a three-runway system will be in place in the early 2020s.

Second, we will focus on innovative design and cutting-edge technology that maximises the efficiency and productivity of our air and sea ports. Our new infrastructure projects offer the best opportunities to do so, but we will also retrofit existing facilities.

Third, we will deepen the services, capabilities and skills that anchor our competitiveness as a global aviation and maritime hub. We will continue to build up a comprehensive ecosystem of services and companies which make up Maritime Singapore. We will invest even more in air traffic management capabilities to remain top of the class, capable of providing the highest standards of safe and efficient air traffic services in our busy and complex airspace. We will continue to work with the industry, unions and educational institutions to train and develop Singaporeans so that they can seize the exciting and rewarding career opportunities in the aviation and maritime sectors.

Our aspiration is for walking, cycling and riding public transport to become the way of life for Singaporeans.

Improving rail reliability will continue to be our top priority. LTA and the operators will be recruiting many additional engineers and technicians in order to further enhance maintenance capacity and capabilities. It will be implementing more stringent maintenance requirements to better detect deficiencies upstream. Major renewal works for the North-South and East-West Lines will be completed by 2018, which will further improve their reliability. In addition, the service levels of existing MRT lines and public buses will be raised further in the next five years. Bus regularity and punctuality, for example, will see marked improvement under the bus contracting industry model.

At the same time, the expansion of our public transport capacity continues apace. The Government is investing heavily in public transport, with a projected $36 billion in capital expenditure in the next five years. We are on track to double our rail network to 360 kilometres in the next 15 years, with a new line or MRT extension opening almost every year between now and 2021. By then, there will be an MRT station within a five-minute walk from any location in the central area, and eight in 10 households will be within a 10-minute walk of a station by 2030. Our transport network is also planned to enable the development of alternative business districts outside of the city centre, where jobs will be closer to homes.

New housing estates will be designed and existing estates retrofitted towards this "Walk, Cycle, Ride" aspiration. Over the next five years, we will quadruple the length of covered walkways and build dedicated cycling paths in more towns. Ang Mo Kio and Tampines will pilot a fully integrated and seamless walking and cycling network. Kampong Bugis will pilot new design concepts for private developments that facilitate seamless walking and cycling, while Bidadari Town will have a walking greenway and cycling paths connecting to its two MRT stations.

Our aspiration is also motivated by the desire for safer streets. We can go a long way towards a future of zero road fatalities by designing streets for the more vulnerable users – children, the elderly and other pedestrians – rather than cars. To this end, we plan to have more "silver zones" and "school zones" that allow the elderly and vulnerable to move about safely. We will build on these concepts for the town centres and our city centre as well, to create a more pleasant and safe walking experience for everyone.

For longer distance connectivity, we will reconfigure the planned North-South Expressway to be part of a "North-South Corridor" that will include express bus lanes and a cycling trunk route to the city. We will restore Bencoolen Street, upon completion of the Downtown Line, with wide pedestrian paths and a dedicated cycling lane to connect to Rochor Canal and Bukit Timah to the north and to the city centre to the south, amongst other cycling connectivity improvements like the Queenstown-City Link and the Bishan-Kallang Link.

Looking further ahead, self-driving vehicle technology will enable new concepts of mobility. We are planning and conducting trials and simulation studies to facilitate their future deployment, which will complement and radically improve the public transport experience, for example, in the first and last mile.

With the support and partnership of Singaporeans, we hope to forge a society where people will give their cars a break and choose instead to "Walk, Cycle, Ride Singapore".