Singapore: no more cars allowed on the road, government says | Hacker News Reader

Singapore: no more cars allowed on the road, government says

theguardian.com

20 pointst1o59 comments

Discussed previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15536481

I find it interesting that Singapore ranks very high on the "Economic Freedom" (read: business friendliness) indexes but is for sure a nanny state, that fines you for chewing gum on the street and so on.

Libertarians use it as an example of prosperity resulting from freedom but there is heavy intervention and central planning everywhere. How do they explain the thiving in the face of this?

They don't and never have fined anyone for chewing gum. Just the sale and import of gum are banned. You can go to another country and bring back gum for personal use, though doing so may be of dubious legality. I know plenty of friends that have done so many times with no issues.

You're right, I accidentally conflated it with spitting out gum:

It is illegal to drop litter, and to “spit any substance or expel mucus from the nose upon or on to any street or any public place”. Penalties for a first offence can be as much as S$2,000, or S$10,000 for doing it three times. In both cases you may also be forced to clean the streets wearing a green vest.

This is very much a problem in many parts of Asia. Whether there should be a law against it is debatable, but I can absolutely understand why something like this would be on the books. I find spitting and blowing your nose onto the street pretty revolting personally, so I don't have a problem with laws like this.

Interesting.

The economic and environmental rationales are compelling.

After reading this, I'm wondering if the prohibition of private vehicles will be unavoidable in the future for large, densely populated areas with growing populations.

Places like Singapore are an isolated incidents. They have nowhere else to grow (unless they want to reclaim land from the ocean sort of what seoulites did with Songdo).

If I recall correctly Singapore has increased it's landmass by about 20% in 50 or so years by reclaiming land from the sea. I have to say though they have plans that by 2030 no place should be more than 10-15min walk from an mrt station and have been trialing different kinds of self driving tech for the last mile travel. I expect in 10 years they might actually get to a point where owning a car might not be worth the hassle.

I would say in most of the cities that are like Singapore owning a car is a hassle. The point is you cannot replicate Singapore. Take Seoul for example with its massive and well maintained infrastructure. The city despite the similar population density is just too big to efficiently cover all its corners by public infrastructure. Sure this will work for "poor" (loose definition of poor i am talking about people that can afford to own a car but prefer not to because it would perhaps eat to much of their budget) that can or have to cope with the public mrt but will not work for 70% (number out of my ass) of other citizens.

The solution is clearly a better urban planning, perhaps some limits to the size of the cities etc.

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