The island of Singapore is a growing population, with more international businesses moving to the country and a booming tourist economy. The congestion in the downtown business district became a concern about ten years ago, when the Census indicated that about half of the residents use the various options of public transportation, and that that number was slipping as more and more of the population began using personal means. Traffic jams and congestion were becoming a problem, as more people were going to more places, be it between meetings, or to the various tourist attractions and shopping malls and any number of one of the top Singapore hotels. The goal of the government was to insure that within the decade up to, and at least 75% of the population taking public transportation.
Now, at the beginning of the century, the rickshaw, and then trishaws were the main form of transportation. And while those are still available today, they are most certainly for tourists. For a night out on the town, this form of transportation is perfect, a bit of history and tradition, as in the horse drawn carriages in Manhattan’s Central Park. But just as it would be time consuming and ridiculous to take a carriage to work in Times Square, the rickshaw is just not an efficient way for everyday travel. One of the first projects intended to relieve the congestion in the central business district was to make it possible and attractive for people to move out of the city. Expressways were built with the hopes that the fast way in and out of the city the expressways would provide, that people would move to the suburbs and commute. Well, now the commuters have created traffic jams, as in any major city with the population commuted to work.
Singapore now has railway mass transit with three tracks built. The fourth, a circle line, is hoped to be completed by the end of 2010. In the downtown area there is one light rail and a number of bus routes that ease a bit of the over-population on the roads.
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