Asian places such as Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong have taken on the four wheeled menace and tamed it, in light of environmental policies, traffic fatalities, high cost, and other factors. Others (Including Korea, which enjoyed annual growth rates as high as 67% over the past decade since its motorization began in the early 1980’s) with increasingly rich and car-happy populations will no doubt have to follow their example sooner or later. The first thing they will find is that they should have started sooner: even less prosperous Asian cities, such as Manila, Jakarta and Bombay are getting car-clogged. The second lesson is that gearing up a country or a city for a major car population is expensive for governments as well as individuals and requires planning and strong political will.
All over Asia, the need for more and better roads is rising. Manila’s traffic jams used to be seasonal, coming during the summer rains and at Christmas time. Now, goes the local joke, it’s Christmas all year round. Jakarta has built relatively few roads since 1986, when there were 600,000 cars in use. The current number: 2.3 million. In several Chinese cities, streets have been upgraded although complaints abound that the ramp designs, taken from the West, do not accommodate the country’s 1.4 million urban bicyclists. India is virtually starting from scratch: half of its 2 million kilometers of roads are unsurfaced, and per capita government spending on road construction is among the world’s lowest.
Building more roads is one answer, limiting their use another. In Japan government makes getting a driver’s license difficult and expensive; every new car buyer is required to prove he has a place to park his vehicle. Hong Kong keeps public transit fares low and car prices high through a 100% duty on new vehicles as well as stiff annual fees.
Nowhere is traffic taken more seriously than in Singapore. New cars carry a 200% tariff, and a would-be owner must spend as much as $71,000 for a “certificate of entitlement” just to have the privilege of buying one. To drive in the city center during the day, a motorist needs $43 monthly permit, which will be replaced in 1998 by a scanning system that will bill car owners who use congestion-prone roads.
Some Asians might argue that tough controls take the fun out of having a car. But sitting in a permanent traffic jam isn’t a lot of laughs either though getting winched out by a helicopter could be interesting.
