Parallel Road to KPE as Additional Route for Motorists Travelling between Hougang and Ubi
Ministry of TransportSpeakers
Summary
This question concerns Mr Gan Thiam Poh’s inquiry regarding building a road parallel to the Kallang-Paya Lebar Expressway (KPE) and increasing its speed limit between Buangkok Drive and Defu flyover. Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan replied that building more roads is unsustainable in land-scarce Singapore as they only provide temporary congestion relief by attracting more motorists. He highlighted sustainable alternatives like enhancing public transport with 15 new North-East Line trains and two new city-bound bus services, alongside monitoring the potential for Electronic Road Pricing. Additionally, the vehicle growth rate was reduced to 0.25% in 2015, with the government considering a move toward zero growth during the next official review period. Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan also rejected increasing the KPE speed limit to 90 kilometres per hour due to safety concerns regarding insufficient sight distance for reacting to obstacles.
Transcript
48 Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked the Minister for Transport whether LTA will consider (i) building another road parallel to the KPE as an additional route for motorists travelling between Hougang and Ubi and (ii) increasing the speed limit to 90 kilometres per hour along the stretch of the Kallang-Paya Lebar Expressway (KPE) between Buangkok Drive and Defu flyover.
Mr Khaw Boon Wan: Building more roads to improve traffic speeds is not a sustainable option in land-scarce Singapore. Furthermore, studies based on the experiences of other cities have shown that building more roads only relieves congestion temporarily. Soon, more motorists will be attracted to use the additional roads, making them congested as well.
The more sustainable approach is to encourage motorists to switch to public transport, manage traffic demand, and continue to tighten the growth of the vehicle population. We have recently added 15 new trains to increase the capacity of the North-East Line. We will introduce two additional bus services by the end of this year to bring residents living in the Northeast from their homes directly to the city centre. We are also monitoring traffic speeds to see whether there is a need to introduce Electronic Road Pricing on the Kallang-Paya Lebar Expressway (KPE). We reduced the vehicle growth rate to 0.25% from 2015, and will consider whether to bring it to zero at the next review.
For safety reasons, we cannot increase the speed limit of the KPE between Buangkok Drive and Defu flyover. The assessment is that this stretch of the KPE does not have sufficient sight distance for motorists to react to traffic or obstacles ahead if they are travelling above 80 kilometres per hour.