The red-plated off-peak car (OPC) scheme has been with us for over two decades now. But it has not been optimised to achieve its goals – constrained by technology (or the lack of) and the notion that car tax rebates should be offset by smaller PARF benefits.
To improve the scheme, tax breaks must be tangible – not the current system that “recoups” part of the $17,000 upfront ARF rebate by reducing the vehicle’s scrap value at the end of its statutory lifespan.
The government must recognise the real but hard-to-quantify social and economic benefits of having these cars off the road during peak periods, and that these benefits are real, and therefore worth more than the sum of parts used to calculate the current off-peak car rebate scheme.
Next, the latest available technologies should be employed to allow these cars to be driven more – on roads which are relatively uncongested, during times that they are uncongested. These may include outer-fringe networks, and times such as 3pm to 4pm, or 11am to 12pm. And if owners want to drive during peak periods, they must pay a punitive fee.
(Currently, off-peak cars are allowed free access between 7pm and 7am, with their owners buying a relatively affordable $20 day licence if they want to drive outside the prescribed hours.)
This will allow people who work odd shifts to have access to a car, and let others who are off duty during those hours to use the car for leisure. If managed well, there will be no or minimal impact on traffic congestion during traditional morning and evening peaks.
It will, of course, be messier to administer and enforce, but the outcome will be more optimal usage of road space, easier access to cars, and perhaps eventually, a round-the-clock economy that will boost Singapore’s GDP.
To embrace such a concept, we should remove the social stigma of red-plated cars. And one way to do this is to drop those red plates altogether. Again, with technology, there will be no need to have physical identification to ensure the usage restrictions of such cars are adhered to.
The last step will be to allow off-peak car buyers to pay the prevailing quota premium on their COEs, which means off-peak cars will not be part of the quota computation, nor factored into the allowable vehicle growth rate. Since their presence will have minimal impact on peak-period congestion, their numbers should be determined by the relevance of their new operating parameters to individual motorists.
