You see if you take COE out of the "discourage driving schemes" repertoire, you cannot control overall car population. You may end up with a paper scenario of 6 million cars driving to sembawang for picnics. So COE + ERP takes care of overall population + select area "pay as you use" scheme.
ERPs on expressways during morning and evening peak hour jams are based on inelastic demand and will not work. They merely serve to smear out the same number of vehicles over a longer time frame. I say let the normal market forces take care of this, in this case, people's dislike of getting stuck in jams. Just as I will, if i can, go for lunch at 1145am to beat the lunch crowd, those that can can plan their journeys at earlier or later times. Those who dont have the flexibility are currently stuck in the same jam paying the same ERP charges now. Fuel lost in jams can be mitigated by start-stop and/or electric technology which will become more commonplace in years to come (if the govt does not continue their protectionistic views on their beloved petrol tax).
The majority of the working crowd who drive to work, only need their car in the whole day for 2 trips. There is actually no need to drive, unlike in bigger countries or cities. Singapore's public transportation's hardware network is actually very comprehensive already. What they are unwilling to do is to increase the frequency of trains and buses so as to absorb the whole travelling working crowd. Because this results in major excess capacity during the off-peak hours, and certainly results in big continuous losses for any transport company.
I say, use the money you've been using to build more roads, to absorb these losses from the transport companies. Increase the capacity to suit the peak hour demand, because the off-peak excess capacity is a necessary evil in land scarce singapore. Singapore as a small city state is extremely ideal for public transportation for going to work. We should stop widening roads. Because the volume from people's reliance on car + bad driving habits + unrealistic traffic regulations & planning will supercede any lane addition. We should stop citing yardsticks based on kilometers of roads built in singapore, but rather by traffic flow rate.
City planners will say, they are doing what they can to pre-empt situations a la Bangkok, Jarkata, Shanghai, Beijing. But they forgot that singapore's well-connected transport network plus relative small size is ideal for people to switch from car to trains almost instantly. All they need to beef up is to double or triple, maybe quadruple seat capacity and train frequency, accept the fact that most of them will never be used during off-peak hours. Also, beef up the already rather robust bus routes to facilitate interchanging, and perhaps increase the bus lanes island wide. Safety distances between trains which is what LTA cited as one of the rubbish reasons for not increasing frequency, can be had by upgrading software and hardware. If need be, construct double decker or parallel lanes to double the train frequency whilst maintaining the same safety distance.
Alternate no-seat carriages with seated carriages perhaps one in every 4 arrivals to pack in more people. Those who genuinely need seats can wait for their seated carriages, aided by the "station ambassodors".
There. Transport situation in singapore sorted.
but I would prefer they account for that booboo with a total replacement when the newer version came out.. but I guessed that's just wishful thinking on my part.