Traffic congestion in cities is a problem throughout the world. Evaluate the effectiveness of one official initiative undertaken to tackle this issue.
Traffic congestion has become one of the serious issues globally due to the rise in traffic demand. As a result of ineffectiveness of existing devices and methods in reduction of bottlenecks, it is more obvious to discover new strategies rather than constructing new alternatives and expansion in public transportation infrastructure. The traditional response to congestion is congestion charging (CC); whose definition is “charging users for using a congested road during peak periods when the traffic congestion is at its highest level to encourage them to either use an alternative route or to change their departure time” (Morgul 2010, 1). Many metropolises of the world have undertaken different initiatives to tackle this problem and hence in terms of its success other cities have implemented similar measures. Singapore with a population density approximately 6 086 persons per km is not an exception. Singapore’s economic growth has been intensive, so recent rapid increase in the cost of living has influenced the growth of car ownership (Phang and Toh 2004). Along with Singapore, who was the first city to introduce congestion charging in 1975, numerous cities: London, Milan, Stockholm, Oslo, San Diego, as well as a collection of towns in England, Latvia, Malta, and the Czech Republic have implemented this program and have seen significant reductions in traffic congestion, fuel use, accidents, and noise pollution increases in travel speed and public transportation usage. Since Electronic Road Charging (ERP) was promoted in 1998 in Singapore, the objective of this procedure was to manage traffic delays instead of collecting money and remained as the unique full-scale urban road pricing scheme designed in reducing peak-time traffic in the world (Albalate and Bel 2008). This essay will focus on