How to tell a newbie driver

My brother rented a car for the weekend because I refused to lend him my car. Luckily I did not do so. He really needs more practice.

Signs of a newbie driver:

• Wide turning.
• Not-smooth braking; braking too early, leaving too much gap in front.
• Slow to move off; leaving a big gap to the car in front and never closing it.
• Hesitation whether to let cars filter in or not.
• Hesitation before lane changing.
• Did not accelerate when lane changing.
• Poor situational awareness.
• Sharp steering wheel movement when given hurried directions. Always check safety first!
• Poor lane discipline; not keeping in the middle of the lane.
• Not signaling.
• Turning into the wrong lane.

What a new driver should know

Here are some things a new driver should take note of:

• Slow down before traffic light. Crossing on red is potentially 12 points. But sudden braking may cause accident too.
• Keep your distance from taxis, especially in the leftmost lane. They can stop any time.
• Keep your distance from old cars on expressways. They may brake suddenly to cause accidents.
• Increase your safety distance before ERP gantries. Cars may brake to a stop before them.
• If you forgot to put your cashcard before an ERP gantry, continue to drive through. The fine is just $10.
• Don't park under trees. I prefer heat to cleaning bird dropping.
• Know the bus lane timing. $130 per offence.

A good scare!

I got a good scare on the road today. I needed to make a u-turn at a junction on my way home. The right turn green light was on. When the car in front almost reached the junction, the light flashed and the car stopped. I had to brake hard — although it did not qualify as an emergency brake — and I stopped very close to the car. I cursed the driver.

Suddenly, I heard screeching sounds from behind me. Someone was braking very hard! I looked at my rear mirror. Oh no, a taxi was closing onto me very quickly! What should I do? What could I do? I braced myself for impact. And I released my brakes — if the taxi hit me, I want to hit the car in front too. Luckily, the taxi stopped in time.

Too big to carry!

I finally found a book that I am not able to transport using my bike. It's too big to be put in the box and too wide to use the fishnet to tie to the backseat. The book measures 43.7 x 36.6 x 3.1 cm.

$10 an accident

I decided to try out the CTE at 8+ pm yesterday night. I remembered to put in my cashcard, of course. Pretty smooth traffic, but the real test is from January, after the holidays.

Saw a string of cars on the rightmost lane right under the gantry. The first car must have stopped due to no cashcard and the others had to jam brake. No accident. I was almost disappointed.

This is a new road hazard in Singapore: when you approach the ERP gantry, be sure to increase your safety distance.

Leisure drivers

Sometimes you encounter them on the roads: drivers who drive too slowly. They are pretty annoying, especially if you're in no position to overtake them. The road etiquette is that you should be going at least the speed limit in lane 1 and at the speed limit in lane 2.

It is especially annoying when they cross the traffic lights leisurely while you're following closely behind so as not to miss the green light.

Whenever I see these drivers in new cars, I suspect they are new drivers without p-plate. If I were the traffic police, I would stop them to check. $120 for the first offence and license revoked for the second offence. I will not give any chance.

Lost my specs while riding

Went to NUS to ta-pau my lunch on my CB400F. Put my specs in the specs box and strap it to the seat using the fish net. When I reached NUS, the box wasn't there anymore!

A new taxi fare structure

Finally, a new taxi fare structure. End of taxi troubles? I don't think so. I already found two weakness in it.

It is still possible to get a spike in demand from 8 pm to 12 pm. Passengers who want to save on the 35% metered charge (which is a lot) will wait until 8 pm. Plus, people who work overtime, they can start claiming only after 8 or 9 pm. These people are price-insensitive as their companies are the ones paying for the taxi fare. So, demand will still exceed supply after the so-called peak period.

Will cabs disappear from 11 pm to 12 pm?

To earn the equivalence of the $3 city surcharge from 50% of the metered fare, the metered fare must be $6. Since the meter jumps by $0.20 every 385 metres, the taxi driver has to drive 11.55 km to earn that extra $3. (It's slightly less than this cos the meter jumps by $0.20 every 330 metres after 10 km.)

So, from 11 to 12 pm, taxi drivers should favour short trips. All put up signs to indicate they want to go Redhill, Tiong Bahru, Queenstown and other nearby towns.

Waiting cars impeding junction traffic

Made another online report:

On taxi surcharges

I'll say the original intent of the surcharge is noble: you pay only if you encounter the situation. The original fare is kept low.

• Booking charge: it guarantees you a taxi at your doorstep. You pay extra during peak hour, which is also fair.
• Peak period charge: you pay more due to higher demand.
• City charge: natural high demand there.
• Public holiday charge: well, higher demand.
• Late night charge: to encourage taxis to stay on the road. They can get away with it cos you don't have much alternative.
• Airport/Expo/Location charge: to encourage taxis to go there.

I'll say there are two reasons why the supply situation downtown is so bad. One, the demand so outstrips supply that the taxi drivers are assured of a booking sooner or later. Two, the demand is one-way — not many people want to get into the city after 9 pm.

Even if you up the basic fare, you still need some sort of peak period charge to discourage usage, or the demand will outstrip supply. (You wouldn't want to price it such that supply outstrips demand.) In this day and time, what I suggest is that the peak period can vary depending on the actual load and not based on a pre-defined period.

One lane stuck

Today, I am reminded the consequence of inconsiderate roadside parking. A 3 lane road was brought to its knee for about 1 km. The cause was a broken down car in the leftmost lane.

A broken down car cannot be helped, but inconsiderate roadside parking is a choice most drivers make out of convenience. This action leads to heavy traffic.

Self-adjusting safety distance

I've discovered an easy way to keep the correct safety distance on expressways. Imagine a chain of cars that are linked by an invisible spring. If the distance is getting longer, you accelerate by 10 km/h. If the distance is getting shorter, you release the accelerator. If the distance becomes very short, you press the brake!

The theory of moving off at traffic lights

At traffic lights, ever notice that the car behind like to wait until the car in front has moved off a certain distance before it starts to move? By the tenth car or so, there is a huge gap to the traffic lights. The following cars have to race to cross the traffic light. This affects right turns particularly.

If everyone moved off at the same time, it'll be much more efficient.

Petrol Prices

Petrol prices continued their relentless drive up. RON95 is now S$2.006 before discount.

I wonder if there will be self-service pumps. You put in a $10 or $50 note, and you pump your money worth of petrol. It accepts no other notes, it does not give any change and it has only one grade of petrol. This should lower the labour costs for the station and hence slightly cheaper petrol. Currently, all petrol stations are big, with car washes and a mini-mart. Are they really needed? Why not just one or two self-service pumps by the road side or in open air carparks? If petrol stations are bank branches, then these pumps are the ATMs.

How to turn out?

I feedback to the LTA this using their Online Reporting Centre:

Removal of car radio

I almost never listen to the radio, and only seldom CDs. For this privilege, I have to pay the radio license of $27/year. I have removed the head unit so that I don't have to pay it. I'm the kind of person to cut my nose to spit my face sometimes.

I may get a CD-only head unit, but so far I haven't been able to find such a head unit locally. No problem, I can live without any music.

Advantage of driving over riding

One big advantage of driving over riding is that you can give people a lift. You can do so with a bike too, but good luck finding a willing pillion. This could be where opportunities come from.

Reuse parking coupons?

People can be real cheapo when it comes to running costs. One of them is parking. Parking coupons look like they can be reused. Should you try? Better not: it's $300 fine.

An online post said that wrongly teared coupons can be exchanged for a new one as long as there is at least one untorn tab. This is good news! I have torn wrongly a few times and continued to use them to avoid wasting them. I know this is penny wise and pound foolish, but yet I cannot help it.

How much to put in cashcard?

Right now I have two cashcards: one for my bikes and one for my car. For the bikes, $20 can last for months, so I only top up after it drops below $10. For the car, now that I don't have season parking anymore, I need to top up about $100 per month. However, I only top up $30 to $50 in one go. If all top-up machines require a transaction charge (like AXS) in the future, I'll top up more.

Taxi woes

From March 2008, we are allowed to board and alight from taxis only at taxi stands when in the city area. I think the cure is worse than the illness.

There has been no end to taxi woes. An MP proposed adding a location surcharge of $1 to $2 to encourage taxi drivers to pick up passengers. He was criticized heavily online for it. I am not so harsh on him. I just feel it's another suggestion that may or may not work.

The most common suggestion online is to scrap all the surcharges and increase the flag-down rate.

Suppose a taxi's FC is 12 km/litre and the diesel price is $1.20/litre, it costs the taxi driver $0.10 per km, whether he has a passenger or not.

Fined again!

I am getting complacent about parking. I just got fined $25 for parking in a season lot. IMO, it's only worth risking for a fine of $8, anything more is not worth it. Even $8 translates to 12 parking coupons.

My target is actually $8 per year. I have overshot the target horribly this year. Just three months ago, I had the most expensive dinner ever. The dinner itself was only $4.50, but the valvet service demanded $70 for parking.

Kei car category

Singapore should have a kei car category — cars under 660cc. Less ARF, separate COE category and cheaper parking.

The ARF could be 50% instead of 110%. ARF of hybrid cars is 70%.

A new COE category is created. The total COE remains the same, just that there are fewer allocated to category A and B. Previously, when there was a category for cars under 1000cc, the COE was high due to demand. This defeats the purpose of a cheap car. So, there must be many COE for this kei car category.

HDB and URA parking can be halved. Parking lots can be redesigned to allow two kei cars to park in one lot.

Worth it to detour for ERP?

There's a new ERP gantry at BKE collecting $0.50 in the morning. This leads me to think when is it worth it to detour.

Given the current petrol prices of $1.80 per litre (RON 92 after discount) and my car's FC of 9 km/l, I should detour if the alternative route is at most 2.5 km longer.

In general, the higher the FC (lower numbers), the less you should detour.

Confusing traffic lights

There is very wide T junction at Serangoon road that has two sets of traffic lights. There's one set before the junction and one set after. The confusing part is, after the cars turned left from the junction, they stopped at the second set of traffic lights! They shouldn't need to!

ERP $5 at CTE

For the first time, ERP hits $5 at CTE. It'll be interesting to see if the traffic improves. LTA always increase the rates the most in November. A common complaint is that traffic generally eases in the next two months due to school holidays, so LTA can claim that ERP works!

70 km/h in KPE

The newspaper reported 4,300 cases of speeding in the KPE in 6 days. There were 24/7 laser cameras, so there's no escape. Interestingly, only 43 were above 90 km/h, so drivers were not intentionally speeding. Looks like I better not speed on expressways when everyone seems to be law-abidding.

ERP allows more people to own cars

Mr Lim, the transport minister, got blasted on online forums after he said this. Well, I think it's true. ERP reduces congestion on heavily used roads, so it allows the car population to grow at a higher rate.

Some people lamented that it is cheaper to own cars, that's why more people are buying them. I got news for them. The car population is only determined by one thing: the COE quota.

Car ownership is and will always be restricted to the top percentile of the population. These days, just looking at the initial cost of ownership is deceiving. It makes it look like a poor family can afford a car. They can't.

Accidents on the expressways

Jams occur once you have an accident. Unfortunately, there are accidents somewhere everyday. There was this day I took an hour and a half to reach office instead of the usual half-an-hour.

First, jam in BKE at KJE exit due to an accident. After that, the exit to PIE was jammed. No wonder LTA wants to put an ERP gantry here. It jams everyday! Then, PIE (towards Tuas) was jammed due to an accident. I exit at Clementi ave 6 and it was jammed. No accidents needed. The exit to AYE was especially bad because cars on the left lanes were trying to change to the right lanes and cars on the right were trying to change to the left. AYE just had a minor accident, so there was a short jam there.

The causeway

If it weren't for the daily jams, it would be perfectly feasible to live in JB, work in Singapore and drive in daily. My guess is that both sides have no incentive to make their checkpoints more efficient. Malaysians clearing the JB checkpoint is ridiculously easy — you just show them your passport. The problem is, you're stuck in the queue along with other Singaporeans.

The morning is usually quite smooth from 6:30 am to 7 am. There is a queue, but at least it is moving. When I go back in the evening, I try to make it to the checkpoint at 5 pm. The checkpoint is clear at that point. If it's after a holiday, I try to reach the checkpoint at 6 am.

I've tried going into JB on Saturday morning 7 am. Very smooth, but there's a short queue at the JB side and it moves really slowly.

I've tried going in on Sunday afternoon, 4 pm to 5 pm, and surprisingly, the checkpoints were clear.

Limitations of Honda Diracc

My opinion of Honda Diracc has gone down a notch. Two problems with it today. One, you may not find a car in popular ports, for example downtown on weekends. Two, even if you find a car, you may not be able to return it to the port of your choice.

Many a time, I realized that a port can be empty, but the slots have been reserved by others, so no more cars can come in even though there are really people waiting to use them.

OPC cars on the road

Do OPC cars contribute to jams? I kept my eyes open for red plates on my ride to work this morning, from 7:35 am to 7:55 am. I did not see a single red plate.

Does Park and Ride scheme make sense?

A park and ride scheme does not make much sense in Singapore. The car parks are quite far from the city! For it to make sense, the car park must just be outside the city so that the car is still easily accessible.

If a person wants to go out at the end of the day, he won't want to park the car too far away. Otherwise it's like going home to get the car.

There should be 3 giant carparks just at the city outskirts, at the north, west and east tip of the city, that can accommodate 5000 cars each.

Purpose of the different car taxes

There are all sorts of tax in Singapore, many hidden. For cars, you have,

• 20% Customs duty — to make cars expensive to import; doesn't work
• ARF that is 110% of the OMV — to make cars twice as expensive; doesn't work
• Petrol tax of 35% of raw fuel price; doesn't work
• COE that is determined by what the 40th percentile will pay; doesn't work
• ERP to tax you on specific routes; doesn't work

For the COE price, I estimate the percentile by dividing the number of cars (400,000) by the number of household (1 million).

How to valuate a second hand car?

How to establish the ceiling and floor of a second hand car?

We start off with the floor price, because it is easier. The floor price is simply the PARF, remaining COE and the body value. You can't offer someone lower than this, because this is what he gets if he scraps the car.

How about the ceiling then? There are many variables involved. A new used car could be 90% of the current new car price. If the car's condition is not tip-top, it'll be cheaper. If the car model is outdated, it will be cheaper.

Lack of parking space

The landlord took back 25% of the season parking for my department. As a result, my season parking was revoked by my department because I was identified as a light user.

The company tried to mitigate the impact by offering to pay for HDB season parking nearby. We have to come to office by using the free internal shuttle service, though.

I have three choices: take up this offer, pay for season parking nearby, or just pay the daily rate of $12 ($1 per hour, $2 per entry after 5 pm).

The company's offer is a no-brainer, of course. It's free, so why not take it. However, it doesn't really make sense to drive and then still be limited by the shuttle bus timing. What if you're carrying stuff? What if you want to go out for a short while?

Season parking in nearby carparks is $120/month. It looks like it's inevitable to pay this. However, I won't be making full use of it and it seems to be a waste.

Given that I typically drive just twice a week, it works out to be $104 per month (4.33 weeks per month). This is very close to the cost of season parking, but I can park much closer to my office. The downside is that I'm limited to driving twice a week.

ERP Charges

Recently LTA announced more ERP gantries and longer operational hours. Not surprisingly, this news has drivers up in arms. Unlike many of them, I support this move. I feel pay-per-use is fair.

Engine hood

The engine hood traps heat very efficiently. I noticed that the engine remained hot even after two hours of stopping the car. However, if I open the hood for 5 to 10 minutes right after stopping, the engine cools down much faster.

The future of driving in Singapore

I have two ideas about the future of driving in Singapore.

First, if LTA is able to implement the pay-as-you-use (PAYU) scheme effectively, they should be able to scrap some or all of the old schemes: COE, ARF, Customs duty and the most fundamental of all, road tax.

Today, if you buy a new car, you're paying 236% * OMV + COE + dealer's markup. If you remove the above taxes, you will only be paying OMV + dealer's markup. Now, don't be silly and think car ownership is going to be cheap. You're simply going to pay the other parts (the 136% of OMV + COE) in the PAYU scheme.

What's the difference? Instead of driving run-of-the-mill entry level cars, you could be driving slightly higher end cars if you can control your usage.

Second, there will be more schemes like Honda Diracc. What I like about the scheme is that you can drive from one port to another and return it. Effectively, you don't need to pay for parking, which is another $$$ killer. It doesn't work very well today due to the limited cars and ports. However, if there are enough cars and ports, you can conceivably get a car anywhere and drive it to your destination without any hassle.

Paying car installment

One way to reduce the car installment is to put down a huge downpayment. If you save $500 per month, you'll have $30k in 5 years. That'll cut down on the loan needed.

Suppose you approach from another angle. What's the most expensive car you can buy given your gross income? A good rule of thumb is 15 to 20%. Don't forget that the car installment is usually only 40 – 60% of the total cost. At $5k gross income, 20% works out to be $1000. For a loan of 7 years, it means you can afford a car of $84k (with interest). With interest at 3%, the car is worth about $67k.

The price of diesel

I used to think diesel was inherently cheaper than petrol. However, petrol is more expensive due to the petrol excise duty of 35% of pump price (or 37 cents per litre, whichever is higher).

Recording while on the move

Just to see if it works, I tied my Sony T50 to my rear mirror and recorded my commute to work one morning. I encountered several issues that will be resolved in the next capture:

• need to ensure the lens isn't obstructed!
• need to clean the windshield!
• need to set the camera focus to infinity
• need to increase EV by +1 in the dark

Storage is a huge concern. The Sony T50 allows 3 recording modes: 640x480 fine, 640x480 standard and 160x100. The fine mode allows some 6 minutes on a 512 MB card and the standard 22 minutes. The quality of the standard mode is marginally acceptable, although number plates are not readable.

However, standard mode takes up too much space. The camera uses MPEG-1 codec that records at 25 fps (PAL) at 3000 kbps (366 kBps), including sound at 64 kbps. I need to buy a higher capacity card to do longer captures and then re-encode the videos offline using a more efficient codec.

As an experiment, I re-encoded the video to 400x300 25 fps using Xvid 1.1 at 330 kbps and audio to MPEG-1 layer 3 at 32 kbps. The file shrank from 428 MB to 53.4 MB.

Is the bus lane under-utilized?

I believe it is. The frequency of the buses are too low and the bus lanes are wasted as a result. Sure, it ensures the buses are running promptly — when not blocked — but that's a high price to pay for other road users.

I propose the bus lane be opened to motorbikes, empty taxis and lorries. It can be made a carpool lane as well!

Safety Distance

What is the real world safety distance? In school, they teach you one car length per 10 km/h and the two seconds rule. The first is rubbish — try that at 70 km/h.

What does the two seconds rule mean, really? At 10 km/h, 2 seconds = 10,000 m / 60 minutes / 60 seconds * 2 = 5.56 metres. That's almost one car length. At 70 km/h, that's 38.9 metres. Is this realistic? A quick brake can stop the car in 20 metres. The two second rule bites the dust.

Now, the two seconds rule sounds reasonable. After all, just two seconds to react and stop fully, it's not a lot of time! However, this is deceptive. You're not going to hit against a stationary object. The car in front is moving forward even though it is braking.

Driving a convertible

Recently there was an article in ST Life on convertibles. It mentioned that there were 0.72 convertibles per 100 cars. That's rather few!

It also interviewed five convertible owners:

• Businessman, 42, $201k Audi TT roadster 2.0
• Director, 35, $387k Audi RS4 cabriolet
• Senior investment adviser, 38, $186k Volvo C70
• Engineer, 31, $139k Peugeot 307CC
• Banker, 39, $218k Mercedes-Benz SLK280

These are all very expensive cars. A few questions came to my mind straightaway: is the markup higher than normal cars? What is the depreciation? Can the owners afford them?

Take the Audi TT roadster. The OMV from LTA is $58.5k. That means the basic car price, including $18k COE, is $155.5k. It sells for $201k, so the profit is 45.5k!

Using a linear depreciation of the car price and the $33k residue PARF into account, the car devalues by $16.8k per year!

Looking at the interviewees' ages and occupations, I have no doubt all of them can afford their cars — except for the "Engineer". Owning a $139k car at 31 years old? Either he is well paid or he is living his dream.

It's not surprisingly that all the interviewees (except for the Engineer) are 35 and above — these are very expensive cars! However, I feel a convertible should be driven when young. There are cheaper second hand alternatives around.

When to ride and when to drive?

Friends asked me how do I decide whether to ride or drive. Unlike others, I do not look at the weather. Heat is not a problem to me. Raining? I have a set of raincoat.

Rather, I looked at where I'm going and see if there would be jam, whether I need to pay for parking or not, whether I need to carry stuff or not.

Accident

Had an accident today. Was behind a Lexus GS300 at a junction. I saw the main road was clear, I thought it would move out, so I moved forward and checked the main road at the same time. The next thing I knew, I had hit the car.

The chauffeur was quite gracious. He took a look at the bumper and asked me if I were alright. I was feeling pain in my crotch, but I said I was okay. He told me to be careful. I was still thinking how to explain that I didn't even apologize.

Maximum utility and FC

Does owning a car means you must drive it all the time to utilize it to the maximum? If you are a "greenie", should you avoid a high FC car?

The answer to both are, no.

Driving a car everywhere just because you can is.. not rational. It doesn't always make sense to drive when you know the roads are going to be jammed and there's no parking space available.

I used to be against high FC cars, until someone pointed out that if you seldom drive it, it doesn't really pollute that much!

How many Super4 are there in Singapore?

Time to apply a little "Fermi".

There are 18,556 motorbikes from 301 to 500 cc in 2006 (LTA stats).

Assumption 1: we can take 95% of this figure as class 2A bikes — there are very few class 2 bikes from 401 to 500 cc.

Assumption 2: how many S4 do you see compared to other class 2A bikes? My guess is 50%. (This is a low estimate.)

So, my guess is 18,556 * 0.95 * 0.5 = 8,814.

Accident rate going up?

It's getting pretty frequent, the accidents that make news. Are accidents rising? It should be, as there are more vehicles on the road. However, I also think it is the "online" effect. Previously, you won't know about accidents unless you happened to see it. Most accidents simply didn't make the news, nor did they get reported if there were no injuries, hence the statistics from the traffic police is on the low side. Today, with the Internet, even minor accidents — involving no injuries — get posted.

Cyclists on footwalks

There's a study to allow cyclists on footwalks. This is merely a reflection of reality — cyclists are already doing it today! I feel the footwalk should be shared by pedestrians and cyclists. The road is really too dangerous for a casual cyclist.

However, most of Singapore's footwalks are not designed with cycling in mind. They give a very rough ride.

Close shaves

Accidents happen every single day in Singapore. How many close shaves do you have in a single day? I set a new record for myself today.

After leaving office, I was on the first lane of a three lane road. I don't like to stay on the first lane, so I quickly overtook a van in the second lane and signaled to switch back to the second lane. I had only a small margin because there was a car in front of me, so I couldn't put too much distance between me and the van. I checked my blindspot. Seemed clear. Still, I got some nagging doubt and decided to lane change slower. I checked again. Ho ho! A motorbike moved out of my blindspot! He horned me too.

Later, on another road, I wanted to turn left and there were two turning lanes. There was construction between the two lanes, so in the right lane, you got to turn right before turning left. I was in that lane. Just before I turned into the junction, I checked my blindspot on a hunch and saw a car turning very fast in the left lane. Didn't look like he was going to stick to his lane. I slowed down. Just in time. He turned into my lane.

Some drivers lane change unexpectedly. It's quite easy to spot them. If you have a huge gap in front of you and a car is stuck behind slow moving traffic in another lane, ask yourself if an aggressive driver would try to lane change. Close the gap with this in mind.

I encountered this twice today, the second I escaped with the narrowest margin ever. I was in the middle lane going straight. A car was on the third lane, but it was a left-turn only lane. The car seemed a bit too slow, so I suspected the driver wanted to go straight. Also, it seemed to inch out very slightly. I decided to move to the right slightly. While I was passing him, he inched out suddenly cos he was near the junction and had to lane change to continue to go straight! I quickly moved more to the right to avoid him.

Small things that makes a difference

I'm a no-frills person when it comes to cars and I can live without many amenities. This is especially important if you're getting a budget sports car — they usually have a pretty bare interior. If you're coming from a sedan, you may miss some of the standard features.

What do I need?

Air-con: absolutely needed in hot weather and in the rain. I don't really turn it on so much in hot weather, only when I have passengers with me; I can stand heat very well. Since I have such an old car, one question I often get is, "does this car have air-con?"!

Interior lights: has it, but don't really need it. Interestingly, my car allows the instrument lights to be dimmed, and my favourite setting is very low brightness — I like the interior to be as dim as possible.

Glovebox: hard to find a car without it. Useful for putting the car papers, parking coupons and street directory.

Radio: have to pay $28/year for this privilege. I seldom listen to radio, at most CDs. Even then, I listen mostly to road noise.

Cup-holders: doesn't have it. Don't need it.

Tilt steering wheel: the steering wheel blocked the view to all the gauges. This was when I realized that I had to make some sacrifices.

Adjustable seats: the seats can be adjusted forward and back, but not the height. Lean angle is adjustable as well. Adjusting the height doesn't make sense because of the low cabin height — you're hitting the roof as it is!

Power steering: my car has it (which doesn't), but I've driven one without before. It's doable without one for a small car.

Wiper timer-interval: this gets to me every time it rains. There is just one timer setting and it's either too fast or too slow. It's too fast in drizzles and too slow in moderate rains. Should have three settings: 10 seconds (ultra slow), 5 seconds (slow) and 2 seconds (normal).

Retractable antenna: my car has a fixed antenna. I always thought it spoiled the clean look of the car, but I accepted its presence. However, I wish it were retractable when it comes to covering the car.

Boot: must still have a boot when the top is down!

The cost of not having a car

Everyone knows the cost of a car. How about the cost of not having a car?

Control of your time. This doesn't mean you can go anywhere anytime — traffic jams abound and parking woes during peak hours. This just means it's easier for you to move around during off-peak hours and after 11 pm.

Reach more places. The bus system reaches many places, but it's slow and changing bus is very time consuming. The MRT system makes you lazy. That's why malls just beside MRT stations are the most crowded. There is a whole different world out of MRT stations. Unfortunately, you won't realize how much you're missing out.

Personal space. Especially important if you're on a date. Call me old-fashion, but I think there are still certain etiquette to follow in a date. You got to fetch and send the girl back. You got to try to create a 2-person world during the date. Not all the time, but at least some of the time. A car is an easy way to achieve it. Not necessarily in the car, but it allows you to go to a quiet places easily. IMO, a girl who doesn't have minimum transport standards when it comes to dating is short-changing herself.

Actually, a bike is just as effective, so if you can't afford a car, go for a bike. It helps with the first two points, but you may find it harder to find a date!

Does per-entry parking make sense?

Many shopping malls and office buildings have per-entry parking charges after 5 or 6 pm on weekdays, on weekends and public holidays. Per-entry charges are usually $2 to $3. Per hour charges are usually in the region of $2/hr.

I wish the malls would pro-rate the charges after 6 pm. Per-entry is cheap if you intend to stay for at least two hours. But if you're going to be there for 30 minutes, it's close to robbery.

Per-entry charges do not make sense on weekends and public holidays if the carpark is very packed. The objective should be to attract real shoppers, not free loaders. How long does a shopper stay in the mall? 3 hours? Ok, we can set a parking charge of $3 for the first 3 hours and $1/hr subsequently.

Pedestrian crossings

The pedestrian crossing at Bugis Junction made news on Stomp again. Two one way lanes separated by a center divider. There are two sets of pedestrian crossing traffic lights, one for each side of the road. The area is enclosed by fences designed to prevent jaywalkers.The center divider is always filled to the brim with pedestrians during peak hours.

It used to be worse. The traffic lights were not synchronized, so the pedestrians will be stuck in the middle for no fault of theirs. It's now supposedly synchronized (I haven't used that crossing for some time), so it should work better. Why is the jam still there? Must make a trip down to investigate.

Now, I must show my dislike for pedestrian crossings. They hold up the turning traffic. Just outside my flat, a new set of traffic lights are being put up when there's already one less than 50 metres away. Just because the pedestrians are too lazy to detour.

Overhead bridges and underground passageways can be constructed when there is space. However, I believe most pedestrians don't use them if possible due to the extra legwork needed. What we need are smarter pedestrian crossings.

For a start, there shouldn't be pedestrian crossings at junctions. If needed, they should hold up straight traffic only. There is more room to queue cars on a straight road than turning lanes.

On really pedestrian heavy junctions, traffic in all four directions should stop and let the pedestrians cross in whatever direction they like. This potentially saves them one crossing. This will make the traffic, especially the turning traffic, much faster.

Pedestrian crossings should only hold up one direction of the traffic. On a one way street, when a traffic light turns red, the whole street becomes a pedestrian crossing. I'm sure you know the places where this happens. And, it's very safe. So, build a center divider so that pedestrians can wait while the lights on each side turns red.

Limited insurance

We are required to get insurance for our vehicles. Yet, it doesn't cover some pretty obvious cases that are no fault of ours:

1. The uninsured — quite obvious, but there are always unlicensed drivers around. One recourse is small claims court. The bad news is you can't take the driver's license away, since he has none to start with. However, you can follow up to make sure the owner's license is taken away.
2. The drunken. Those who are most likely to make judgement errors are not covered. Great.
3. Natural disasters — don't park under a tree during thunderstorms!

Lowest ever running cost for a car

What is the lowest possible running cost for a car in Singapore? Let's find out.

Loan: $0. Can be done easily if you get a COE car. A 15-1/2 year old car ranges from $9k to $16k.

Road tax: $750 (1L) to $1425 (1.6L). It is 50% higher due to the age of the car.

Insurance: $1000 (third party, 0% NCD). Let's start from the first year. There's no need to get comprehensive coverage for an old car.

Season parking: $65/mth. Let's assume you live in HDB and not Condo, ok?

Petrol @ 10,000 km (12 km/litre, $1.50/litre): $1.2k.

ERP: $60 (light usage). ERP can get expensive, so don't work in the CBD and don't try to cross any gantries.

Other parking: $360 (free parking at office).

Maintenance: $50/mth. Absolutely essential for an old car.

Total per month: $452. That's cheap, isn't it? Now, this isn't the absolute lowest running cost, but it is close enough. And, it doesn't require much sacrifice to achieve it.

Different classes for cars?

There's a letter proposing different classes for cars, based on engine capacity. I don't think such a scheme is necessary. There is already something that works well: insurance. Young and high performance are a lethal combination. However, most people managed to work around it by using their parent's name. So, just plug this loophole: all drivers under 23 (say) must be named.

Car maintenance

Driving is just half the joy of owning a car. The other half is servicing it. However, most people would rather not deal with it, mainly because it looks difficult, dirty and unfamiliar.

A flip of a car's owner manual shows the typical things a tree-shade mechanic can do: change engine oil/oil filter, change transmission oil, change air filter, change sparkplug and rotate tyres. Changing the engine oil is probably the most difficult of the bunch. However, if it were truly difficult or dangerous, it wouldn't be in the owner's manual.

There are many hurdles. The first is usually fear: fear of breaking the car, fear that you're going at it without proper training, fear of things going wrong.

Another is space. Most of us park at HDB carparks and do not have a dedicated garage. This limits the servicing we can do — we can't easily stop and come back later.

The last hurdle is getting the tools. You need a set of wrenches, sparkplug removal tool, oil filter wrench, a couple of jackstands and a hydraulic jack. The problem is finding them! We all know we can get the tools from hardware shops, but where are the hardware shops? If you're not into DIY, you wouldn't know. Luckily, the Internet has all the answers these days.

And what's the payoff of doing your own servicing? Do you save money? Perhaps you do, but that is at an expense of your time. I see it as knowing the car better.

Road hazard signal

Today, I was behind a car that turned on its road hazard signal and was coasting at a slow speed. Thinking it was coming to a stop, I overtook it. As I wanted to turn left, I tried to filter back. That was when I realized the car was still moving forward! I sped up to overtake it and turned into the junction just in time. The car was still creeping forward!

Later, I was waiting at a traffic junction trying to make a u-turn. There was a car in the opposite direction in the first lane. It looked like it wanted to make a right turn — it looked like it was slowing down — but its signal was not on. I decided not to take the risk.

Just then, the traffic lights turned yellow. Yellow lights are very dangerous because some drivers still choose to speed across them — I've done it myself when I couldn't slow down in time. I waited. The car behind me honed lightly. Come on, it's still yellow.

After I turned, I lost it and began to horn myself. Maybe next time I'll stop and talk to the driver.

Why not a convertible?

There are many reasons why convertibles are not popular in Singapore: 2- seater, soft-top, hot and humid weather, high running costs and other tradeoffs.

A 2-seater car has a certain presumption attached to it: that the driver is a show-off or the passenger must be a pretty girl. To everyone who thinks this way, I have only one thing to say: it's just a car that happens to have only 2 seats on it.

There is another argument against 2-seaters: that you cannot transport people. Really. First, how often do you do it? Second, do you look forward to transporting people? For people with family, a 2-seater will be your second car, not your first. But for singles, couples and married folks without kids, a 2-seater is sufficient 90% of the time.

If 2 seats are not enough, how about 2+2? It sounds good on paper, but once you take a look at most 2+2 convertibles, you'll know the back seats are not usable at all. And you pay a very high premium for them.

A soft-top is definitely a turn-off, especially in Singapore, where we park in unguarded HDB carparks. The risk of vandalism is high. But a hard-top is not without its tradeoff. A less known problem with convertibles is the small boot space. Hardtop convertibles are especially bad in this aspect. When the top is down, there's virtually no boot space at all.

A good argument against convertibles is the hot and humid weather. It's simply too hot to open the top for most of the day. It's only feasible only before 8 am and after 9 pm, and then you got to choose your route properly to avoid jammed roads. Being stuck in a jam is no fun with the top down. (In contrast, it is cool enough to ride a motorbike before 9 am and after 7 pm.)

A convertible is more expensive than other cars, usually sits lower and rides worse — most convertibles are sports cars. You have to pay higher road tax and insurance. Also, it's not cheap to own a car in Singapore, much less two, so a convertible as a second fun car is usually not an option.

Given all these drawbacks, it's no wonder convertibles are not popular. Yet, the owners of convertibles are often looked at with a mix of bafflement and envy, because they have done something seemingly irrational.

Garbage trucks

There should be a law disallowing garbage trucks during sane hours of the day. It's no fun when you're stuck behind one on a bike. And you don't really have to be right behind one. The smell lingers for quite some time. If you're on the wrong side of the wind, good luck.

Letting people off

Just outside my office is a school. Every morning around 7 am, there'll be many cars parked on the leftmost lane to let the kids off. This causes the road to jam up, which isn't too bad, cos there's low traffic at that time. However, I'm always afraid of cars turning out to the second lane without checking their blindspot.

Letting people off by the side of the road is an issue in Singapore. Cabs, especially, need to do it to pick and drop customers. Letting people off at schools, office and shopping centers are normal.

As such, I'm not in favour of legislation. It's already illegal to stop at most busy roads; they carry a fine of $70 to $120. But you know, people still need to drop off.

This is where the road infrastructure falls short. There should be small side lanes for cars to turn in and make short stops. It is difficult to find more space to build such lanes, though. In the mean time, just watch out for traffic from the leftmost lane!

Considerate stopping at traffic lights

I stopped behind a motorbike at a traffic light today. We could have shared the same space, but he stopped in the middle of the lane, with both feet spread wide out on the road — which is dangerous, btw; I've gotten my foot run over by a cab before.

Actually, I like to stop in the middle too, but I like to keep my feet close to the bike. Other bikes have no problems sharing either side.

I got another thought while at that traffic light too. We should have two kind of red lights: one is the existing full stop. The other is to stop first, but free to go if no traffic. If you get stuck behind a red light in the dead hours of the morning because your bike wasn't big enough to trigger the sensor, you'll know what I want.

And since we know drivers don't always stop first before moving off, we should have a flashing red light to indicate it's ok to just slow down to 30 km/h before moving off.

Not coming to a full stop before a stop signal is an immediate failure in the TP test, but how many people do that in real world driving? Even I don't do it.

Poorly placed pedestrian crossings

It just clicked in me that LTA needs to look where it places pedestrian crossings. I turn in from a 70 km/h road into a small road. There's a pedestrain crossing right at the filter lane, . Really, can anyone stop in time?

There are some pedestrian crossings just before a give-way junction. Sometimes I'm too pre-occupied checking the traffic and forgot about the pedestrain crossing.

I certainly hope that these pedestrian crossings can be made more obvious to drivers. And that the pedestrians don't really expect drivers to give way. Yes, they are supposed to. But no harm checking first, right?

One interesting thing is that after I learnt to ride, I got into the habit of checking the traffic — both ways — whenever I step onto the road. This applies whether I cross the road or not. Not that I didn't before, but now I don't take it for granted. Safe riding requires you to ride defensively. Same as being pedestrians — walk defensively.

Hotshot driver

In October 2005, a person test drove the NC MX-5, crashed it and killed the sales lady who was with him. I found it interesting that it was pointed out that he had no intention of buying the car and that he had test-drove aggressively before.

Fast forward to March 2007. A netizen in MyCarForum hinted that the person was not just not unrepentant, but he was choosing between two powerful cars (Golf GTi vs WRX STi)! After a few days of postings, the news made it into ST on 4th April. I found the episode very interesting. When the accident happened, the driver's identity was kept secret. How come it's ok to publish his name and photo (in Chinese newspaper) now?

Who is the driver? Mr Regan Lee of HMT Pte Ltd. Apparently he has since changed his handphone no. and friendster id. One thing that pissed many people off was that he was still allowed to drive. I have no problem with that — innocent before sentence, right? However, we should have a tag, similar to the p-plate, to indicate dangerous driver. It is used on drivers under investigation and drivers who have caused accidents in the past two years.

Personally, I felt the accident was made worse by killing the young and pretty sales lady at the beginning of her career. It made it easy for others to sympathize with her. Too bad for Mr Lee, even if it turned out the road was the major contributor. Talking about the road, the Upper Paya Lebar road is indeed a potential accident zone. Windy. Metal plates. Confusing road markings.

ERP season parking

My office uses ERP to detect entry and exit. For season parking, we need to submit our IU serial no. to the carpark operator. We are only allowed one IU serial no. What happens to people who has more than one car? Too bad for them, they have to pay the hourly parking fees for their second car.

Secured parking

MSCP parking is not secure. Things can be stolen from bikes. Cars can be vandalized easily. HDB can offer a premium secured lot service, where a bike or car is physically protected or at least under active survelliance. Charge $100/month for bikes and $500/month for cars. People who worry so much about their bikes/cars will be able to afford these prices.

Changes to bus lane timing

Like every driver, I received a letter from LTA regarding the changes to the bus lane, effective 1st April. New full day lanes, changes in timing. And a decal to put in your car! That's good, I'll never forget the timing again.

No changes on weekday mornings, still 7:30 am to 9:30 am. As I usually travel to work before that, I'm not affected by that. Evenings, instead of 4:30 pm to 7 pm, it's now 5 pm to 8 pm. This is definitely bad. At 7 pm, the roads are still jammed, but many people don't dare to use the bus lane, so it's relatively clear and fast. Now I can't make use of that anymore.

No bus lane on Saturday. This is expected. Since the change from 5-1/2 day to 5 day work week, the rush hour traffic on Saturday will drop.

New full day bus lanes are added. Despite its name, it only operates from 7:30 am to 8 pm (everyday except Sundays). At least the timing is consistent with the normal bus lane. Previously it was hard to remember.

Will full day bus lane help in Eu Tong Sen street, Hill street and Victoria street? I have my doubts. For Eu Tong Sen street, the problem is left turning traffic. Many vehicles want to turn left into Cross street (into CTE?), but they can't because of the heavy usage of the pedestrian crossing. These cars will still clog up the bus lane. Now worse, they will clog up the neighbouring lane as well.

And after removing the time-wasting pedestrian crossings, be sure to fine heavily ($500, no grounds for appeal) any vehicles that wait in the bus lane, excluding the public buses. They cause the buses to lane change. And if you've seen how long it takes a bus to lane change — slowly inching out and nobody giving way — and back, you'll want to fine the inconsiderate drivers too.

Vanity plates

Recently LTA revealed that they were considering allowing personalized plates, but they didn't give much more information than that. How much would it cost per year, for example? My guess is at least $500/year.

The newspaper said it'll most likely be a flat fee to apply for the plate, instead of auction-based. This means first come first served, which means rich people are going to be pissed off. But it doesn't really matter. It's easy to pad a few characters to get a similar plate.

Is it worth paying $500/year for a vanity plate? It's too expensive for me. Maybe it's because I don't have anything in mind presently. But also, I don't like to pay for unnecessary running cost. However, if LTA considers allowing removing the front number plate for $200/year, I'll take it up!

Charge parking by demand

Parking charges has always been very straightforward. It's either per-entry (very unlikely) or based on time. I always wondered why can't it be charged based on demand?

As parking space becomes more scarce, it should become more expensive. When a carpark is below 50% capacity, you pay $1/hr, but when it crosses that, it's $2/hr. Over 90% full? $3/hr.

To prevent cars from simply waiting outside until it's below 50% (like people waiting for ERP hours to go off), the rate is applied to existing cars, at every 15-minutes interval (say). So, if you park for 30 minutes, the first 15 minutes you could be paying $1/hr cos it's below 50%, the second you're paying $3/hr!

The beauty of this scheme is its simplicity. There's no pre-defined peak hours. It's all up to the demand. If the carpark is not in demand, it'll be cheap.

For big carparks, it should also be possible to charge based on location. It's obvious that some lots are more desirable than others. However, it'll be too expensive to be able to differentiate individual lots, so the carpark could be zoned instead. Zoning by level is pretty straightforward. For multi-level carparks, it's obvious the last level is the least desirable, so it should be the cheapest.

Variable charges are confusing, but you want fairness, you got to have dynamic charges.

Trying out some numbers here:

	> 0%	> 10%	> 25%	> 50%	> 75%	> 90%
HDB	$0.10/hr	$0.50/hr	$0.50/hr	$1/hr	$1/hr	$2/hr
Non-CBD	$0.10/hr	$0.50/hr	$1/hr	$1/hr	$2/hr	$3/hr
CBD	$0.10/hr	$1/hr	$1/hr	$2/hr	$2/hr	$3/hr

High tech carpooling

Observe the cars during peak hours. You'll see mostly just the driver inside. This is an inefficent use of space. I like the idea of carpooling, so I thought of returning to the original ALS where car pool was exempted. Have a smart IU that allows smart ICs to be slot in. The more you slot in (max 4, say), the cheaper your ERP. 1 person = $20, 2 = $10, 3 = $6, 4 = $4. The IC must be registered in advance and all must be working in the CBD, which can be checked by other means. Detected fraud would be fined like OPC — minimum $5k — and banned from having this card for 10 years.

Lane changing and signalling

The first thing that you'll forget after you get your driving license is how to signal. Many people don't like to signal. Maybe it takes time. Maybe the sound is annoying. Maybe they think people wouldn't let them cut in.

I was trying to lane change from the bus lane to the second lane today. When I glanced at the side rear mirror, I saw this car saddling the first and second lane. hmm, was he lane changing or what? Safety first. I decided to delay changing lane, even though I was already inside the solid bus lane marking. Just as well, he was lane changing.

Just less than 5 minutes before this, I was trying to lane change from the fourth to the third lane. I checked the third lane was clear and I started to change lane. Just then, a car lane changed from the second to the third and then to the fourth at very high speed. We were sharing the third lane for a short while. His signal was on, but that doesn't give him the right of way.

Basic car cost

Before you buy a car, especially a newly launched car, it is instructive to find the dealer's markup. This is very important because the dealer will lower his price over time, and you'll be hit by both depreciation and lowered prices of new cars.

The starting point is the car's OMV (open market value). You can think of it as the price of the car overseas. To be fair, dealers may bring in the basic model and add options locally to lower the OMV so that all the taxes are reduced as well.

The first thing that gets hit on the car is the Customs duty at 20% of the OMV. This is followed by GST on both the Customs duty and the OMV. Then there's the RF (Registration Fee) of $140 and ARF (Additional Registration Fee) that is currently 110% of OMV. Finally, there's the COE, currently hovering around $12k.

Put in a formula form, the basic car cost is,

Simple, isn't it?

Now let's take a look at an example, the Mazda 3 SP 1.6 (A). The OMV is about $14.8k, so the basic car cost is about $47.1k. It is selling about $53k, so the dealer's markup is $5.9k. This is pretty acceptable. However, just a year ago, this car was selling at $64k, with the COE also at $12k. If you want to sell the car off, you need to price it at, say, 80% of current price, or $42.4k. You have lost $21.6k, of which 40% ($8.8k) is due to the current price.

This is a sobering lesson. If you don't take into consideration the dealer's markup, you'll pay dearly when you need to sell your car off and find that you can't ask for the prices that you thought you could.

Traffic buildup

A 3-lane road becomes 4 lanes just before the traffic lights and after the junction, merges back to 3 lanes. I never understood this. Traffic is like water, it's not compressible. It may look like there will be a shorter queue before the traffic light, because the cars now queue in four lanes. However, after they move off, they need to merge back, and merging is always done at very slow speeds.

You may have noticed that traffic slows down tremendously whenever a lane gets blocked for whatever reason. If you think traffic merely slows down by 1/3 if one out of three lanes is blocked, you are way off. It slows down by a factor of 2 to 3! This is because the blocked lane will be trying to merge to its neighbouring lane, causing it to slow down as well. This is why even though many roads are wide in Singapore, the traffic doesn't seem to improve. There are always some obstructions: inconsiderate drivers parking on the left lane, bus stopping (no bus bay), cars waiting to turn right and so on. The fine for such inconsiderate parking should be increased ten-fold in view of the inconvenience they bring about.

Left-turn traffic lights

Once in a while, you'll come across a traffic light with a left turn arrow. It'll turn green while the go straight lights are still red. The intention is to allow left turning traffic to move off. However, most of the time the cars are going straight, so the traffic remains stationary. If LTA expects most cars to observe road courtesy and try not to be on on that lane, I think LTA is expecting too much. :-)

More statistics from LTA

Here are LTA's motorcycle and scooter statistics for year 2006:

<= 100cc	2,548	1.80%
101 – 200cc	107,778	75.96%
201 – 300cc	3,167	2.23%
301 – 500cc	18,556	13.08%
> 500cc	9,832	6.93%
Total	141,881	100%

I don't know how LTA chooses the cutting points. I'm interested to know the figures by class 2B (<= 200cc), class 2A (<= 400cc) and class 2.

Not all is lost, though. The 201 – 300cc category is virtually 250cc bikes. The 301 – 500cc category is mostly 400cc bikes. There are only a handful of 350cc and 500cc bikes. Thus, we can see that there are 78% class 2B bikes, 15% class 2A bikes and 7% class 2 bikes.

Radical redesign needed for expressways

The CTE is regarded as the worst expressway in Singapore. It jams at all hours of the day, wee hours in the morning not withstanding. No number of ERP gantries and small ERP increases will help with the congestion, because there are just too many south-bound vehicles in the mornings and vice-versa in the evenings. The ERP charges change the driving pattern, but do not discourage enough car owners from driving.

There is a plan to build a new adjacent expressway, NSE (North-South Expressway). I have my doubts it will help, unless it is radically redesigned. I have my ideas how an expressway should be designed. Most of it are taken directly from CTE. Others are based on my daily observations.

1. Dynamic allocation of lanes. A normal expressway has 6 lanes, but several have 8 lanes at their widest. We'll make NSE 8 lanes right from the start. It is normally 4 – 4, but 1 to 2 lanes may be allocated to either direction if needed. The static allocation of lanes is the biggest waste of resources today, in my opinion.
2. Have a dedicated fast lane for long distance travel. You can't leave once you join it (one way merging; new road marking needed), except at certain points.
3. Let expressway entries join one lane transparently, so vehicles don't have to slow down or stop to check for safety.
4. No traffic lights/junctions right after exits! They force long queues which spills into the expressway.
5. Close an exit when it becomes congested. This may require building several exits close to each other (1 km apart), to allow motorists to exit close to their destinations.
6. Have ERP gantries that deduct more if the speed is lower than, say, 40 km/h. In other words, you pay more if it jams, less if it doesn't.

Basic maintenance

How do you care for your bike?

At the most basic: keep it clean. Not only it looks nicer, it also reveals any trouble spots, like leaks. I'm pretty lazy, but I try to keep my bike clean. I don't clean it as soon as it's dirty, but you can be sure I'll get to it sooner or later. I clean much less during the rainy seasons because the effort is wasted. After getting the YRB for two years, I finally put in a major effort to clean all the parts, including behind the panels.

The second thing to do is to maintain the tire pressure. I have a pressure gauge and I check the tire pressure every two to three weeks. My tires leak very slowly, that's why I check them pretty infrequently.

Next is lubing the chain. This is one area I can do much better. The recommended cycle is every 500 km, or after riding in the rain. That's just too much for me. I usually lube my chain every 1000 to 1500 km. The main reason is because it dirties the rims. It's a pain to clean the rims. Maybe it's due to this, the chain on my YBR is stretched by a lot already. I have to adjust it several times already. Just when you think it can't get worse, my record is worse on the CB400F. This time, it's due to the lack of main stand and that the exhaust pipe gets in the way. It's very difficult to lube without the main stand.

Yet another dead easy task is changing the spark plug. But since this thing last 10,000 km or 20,000 km, it's seldom done.

After these simple tasks, the rest are probably just checking the brake pads, various fluid levels and applying WD40 to various joints to keep them smooth.

There are a few more things that can be done if you are willing to put in a little effort: checking air-filter, adjusting the chain, changing engine oil, changing oil filter.

Checking the air filter is probably the easiest. It doesn't have to be checked very often, maybe once every 5000 km (or 6 months). The air in Singapore is pretty clean and my air filters have always been very clean.

Adjusting the chain is easy on my YBR — once I managed to loosen the axle nut for the first time — because it has a main stand. It's a 10-minutes job for me, if I don't have to adjust the rear brake in the process. I want to do the same for my CB400F, but I need to look for a jack-stand or suitable paddock stand first. A normal paddock stand doesn't work because the exhaust pipes get in the way.

Changing engine oil is messy, hence most people prefer to let the workshop do it. Usually the workshop will change the oil for free if you buy the oil there, so there's no point to change it yourself. However, this is really a very simple task and I hope to continue to do it. The problem I have is with the oil disposal. Once I find a workshop that would take in my old oil, I'll do it again.

Changing the oil filter is quite straightforward if it is external. The one in the YBR seems to be internal and requires the crankcase to be opened! This sounds like a major effort to me, yet it is described in the owner's manual!

To me, owning a bike means more than riding it. We should do some basic maintenance too. The owner's manual describes many simple tasks that a owner can do. My take on this is that if it's complex or dangerous, it wouldn't have been there — manuals are written with a low denominator in mind. The YBR comes with a toolbag too. I like the fact that bikes are still so simple that we can still get our hands dirty if we want.

Choosing parking lots

When you have a new car, one source of your stress comes from parking. You don't want to get scratches and dents, so you got to watch where you park. In general, parallel parking is the safest. But they are pretty rare. Most lots require perpendicular parking.

In an MSCP, not all lots are created equal. Some have pillars on one or both sides, so the lot is effectively larger. These are usually the best lots, but they are rather rare. There are lots that are further from the stairs or are just plain hard to park. I like these lots. But the downside is, if a newbie tries to park there, the chance of scratching is higher. Most cars also avoid the top unsheltered level. You can park there without any worry. But it is unprotected from the sun and rain, so I only park there overnight.

In other carparks, if it's a multi-storey carpark, always go to the most remote level (lowest level for basement carparks). There are usually much fewer cars there. And they are usually parked longer. You don't want a lot where the frequency of parking is high. Finally, don't park at the first free lot you see. Check out the neighbouring cars first. Are they more expensive than yours? Good. If not, move on.

The downside of parking so remotely is that the car may be prone to vandalism or break-in. You got to take your chances.

Car depreciation

You buy a car for $50k, inclusive of COE at $11.5k. Its OMV (open market value) is $12k. Under the current PARF (preferential additional registration fee) scheme, the ARF is $13.2k. At the end of 10 years, you'll get back 50% of the ARF, or $6.6k. Your depreciation is thus $4.34k/year.

This is provided you pay cash. Suppose you take a loan of $35k at 3% for 7 years, you would have paid a total interest of $7.35k. Your depreciation is then $5.1k/year.

$50k can get you a pretty decent car these days. And paying $5.1k/year for it, which works out to be $423/mth, is affordable. Note that this amount is what you pay purely for owning the car. We're not talking about road tax, insurance, parking and petrol here! So, cost of car ownership is not really that high. It's within reach if you earn $2k/mth.

If you don't know how COE, OMV and PARF works, it's best to go to one.motoring website for some basic lessons. LTA gives out all the necessary information. It's up to you whether you want to learn or not.

Of course, do you know anyone who owns the same car for ten years? Of the 28.8k cars registered in 1996, only 3.3k were left in their ninth year. And only 1.1k were renewed.

Therefore, it is very likely you'll sell your car. And if you do so, it is important to know how much you'll get back at each point in time. That's when you realize part of the car's depreciation is actually due to the dealer's markup. If the dealer's markup is $10k and you sell the car in 3 years, you're losing $3.3k/year purely due to the markup. Hence, I'm never too enthusiastic about any cars where the dealer's profit margin exceeds 25%. Even 20% is too high, but that's what most dealers charge.

LTA actually provides the cost of cars, down to the exact model, registered every month (you need to download one every month; LTA does not provide an archive). So, if you overpay for your car, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Statistics from LTA

LTA provides some very interesting statistics on their one.motoring website, under LTA Information & Guidelines > Facts and Figures.

Here's one of them, the car population by age:

Each column shows the car population by age for a given year. That's how LTA provides the information. But you should really view it by row. That shows how many cars don't make it to the next year.

You can make the following observations:

• For the year 2006, 80.9% of the cars are below 4 years old. 7.1% are over 10 years old.
• You can see the effect of the PARF rebate working. There are much fewer cars after the fifth year. Before 1997, cars lasted till the eighth or ninth year.
• The high scrapping figures hinted that the secondhand market is very weak. Indeed, the Vehicle Transfers statistics from LTA showed that 67,337 cars were transferred in 1998, compared to 20,809 in 2006.
• The blue cells are the magic 10-year period where you need to renew COE. You can see that there's a sharp drop in numbers at that point.
• Most of the old cars are between 15 to 16 years old. One key reason was that the PQP (cost to renew the COE) was just $18,444 in August 2001. It was worth it to extend the cars nearing 10 years old then.
• Most old cars don't make it to their 20th year. Many get scrapped in their 17th to 19th year.

LTA does not give figures for cars that are 21 years old. Thus, it is not possible to know how many cars are renewed a second time. I tried to use the other provided statistics to compute, but it proved beyond me. I believe I got the formula right, but the results don't make sense. One problem is that LTA's figures from different statistics don't tally, so I'm not sure if I interpreted them correctly.

Bus wardens vs camera handphones

Two bus wardens "booked" a car parked by a double yellow line. The driver was irate that they didn't ask his wife (who was in the car) to shift it. Later, he saw them parked on (the same?) double yellow line and having their breakfast at a nearby coffeeshop. He proceeded to take a video of them and their bikes and posted it on the Internet. Citizen justice!

However, as a rider, I can understand why they parked like that. Riders have a habit of parking anywhere they like. I wouldn't have parked on the road, where it would inconvenience vehicles, but on the pavement instead. If you want to park illegally, you need to consider two things: (i) will I inconvenience other people, (ii) what's the chances of getting fined?

I'm in favour of allowing bikes to park on wide pavements. If you haven't realized, most URA carparks have very few bike lots. Many private carparks, especially those in the city center, don't even allow bikes to enter. To sidetrack, Sentosa would be a good place to go riding, but it disallows bikes from entering. I won't mind paying $20 to go in.

The simple solution to bike parking is, as I've said, to allow parking on wide pavements. If parking is made so convenient, there will be more people willing to ride a bike as a daily transport. Riding a small bike makes sense in Singapore. After all, Singapore is both small and dense. I saw endless parked bikes on pavements in Barcelona and I'm impressed.

Signalling

When you want to turn left, you signal left. Simple? However, I've encountered some situation where it is better not to signal, or to signal otherwise.

A 3 lane road that spilts 3 ways: the leftmost lane into a left turn, the center widens into 2 leftish lanes, and the rightmost lane widens into 2 straight lanes. The middle 2 lanes show a left turn sign, but I would think twice before signalling left. If you think there's no such road, think again. There's at least one: Balestier road turning into Moulmein road.

Toa Payoh lorong 6 turning into PIE presents another scenario. After turning out from the left-turn filter lane, the leftmost lane goes into PIE (Changi). The other two lanes go to PIE (Tuas). Since it's a left-turn filter lane, you naturally turn on the left-turn signal. But that misleads other drivers into thinking you are turning into PIE (Changi). The best thing to do is to change your signal from left to right once you enter the left-turn filter lane.

Slippery roads

It's mostly dry weather nowadays, with rains in the mid or late afternoons. And sometimes you just forget the danger of slippery road does not end when you stop. Once, when coming to a full stop, I put my left foot down. And slipped. Almost. Luckily I was still pressing the front brake and the bike stayed. Look where you put your foot. Painted or metal surfaces are very slippery. In my case, it must have been a patch of oil.

U-turn?

A rather famous person in Singapore wrote about our No-U-Turn-Symptom. I wished he hadn't use this example. You can't u-turn where you want, especially junctions without dedicated right-turn lanes for a good reason: you'll be holding up the traffic and incoming traffic are not expected to slow down. Therefore, I am in favour of Singapore's explicit u-turn rule.

The confusion continues because there are junctions with explicit no u-turn signs. If they are illegal by default, then these signs shouldn't be there, right?

Rule of thumb for affording a car

A guideline as to whether you can afford a car comfortably: the car should be less than your annual income. A stricter version is to compare it against your take-home income. Another guideline is that the annual car depreciation is less than your monthly income. Again, a stricter version is to compare it against your take-home income.

Do these guidelines make sense?

You can get a pretty decent car for $60k nowadays. If you include the 13th month bonus, you need to earn $4.6k/mth to own it. Still, a $60k car is at most a lower to mid entry level car, while $4.6k is not your average kind of pay. Let's not even talk about using take-home pay.

A car in the range of $55k to $70k has an annual depreciation of $4k to $5k if you own it for all ten years. Unfortunately, most people don't. If you sell it after 3 to 5 years, your depreciation is often $7k to $8k. Again, it's obvious that these are not your average kind of pay.

Following traffic rules

Not following traffic rules is a badge of some sort to say that one is a seasoned driver. I wonder if it's because the traffic rules are overly strict.

The most commonly broken rule must be the turn signals. Not signalling when changing lane: a common excuse is that the cars will speed up and not let you lane change. I haven't observed this. Not signalling when turning: I suppose the rationale is that if you are already on a turn lane, there's no need to indicate it anymore.

Not stopping before yellow boxes. Surprisingly, the yellow box is respected most of the time. However, you still can see many drivers ignore the yellow box.

Not stopping before pedestrain crossings. At a left-turn junction with a filter lane, there is usually a pedestrain crossing. When the cars queue up for their turning, they often stop on the crossing itself. I usually stop at the second line.

Avoiding fines

If there's one motto I live by, it's avoiding fines. I don't believe in these donations.

The easiest way to get fined is parking. It's very tempting to skip the coupon. $8 for no coupon in a valid lot. $25 for parking in a season parking lot or outside of a lot, with coupon or not. $70 for parking on pavements. And a whopping $100 for parking in void decks.

I don't pretend to be a saint and park legally all the time. However, if I can, I will do so, even if it's a short walk away. $8 can buy 12 coupons. That can last me a month.

And the other half is riding. Illegal u-turn ($70) and using bus lane ($130) are the most tempting things to do. Riding against the flow of traffic ($200) is tempting on one way roads. It's also possible to forgot to turn on the headlights ($30).

ERP reminds me of my poor memory — I can't never remember their timing. Not putting cashcard is $10, but forgetting to remove it means money gone too!

It's also quite easy to over-speed, given the low speed limit on most roads. If you don't see any speed sign, the default speed limit is 50 km/h. Most 3 lane roads are 60 – 70 km/h, though. 70 km/h is as high as you can get on normal roads. The default for expressway is 80 km/h and some stretches are 90 km/h. Almost no one adhere to these limits. It's safe to speed by 10 km/h most of the time, and even up to 20 km/h is considered ok — you don't usually get caught, and even if you do, there's "only" a fine of $120, no demerit points.

When I ride the 125cc bike, I don't have a problem with speeding; it operates best at 50 – 70 km/h. But on the 400cc bike, it's quite tempting to burst into high speed once in a while. Once, I went up to 100 km/h on a 50 km/h road. 40+ km/h over the speed limit carries a fine of $200 and 12 demerit points. Is it worth it? I don't think so.

Annual mileage

It is often said the average annual mileage in Singapore is 20,000 km. That translates to 54.8 km daily. For a working person, that means traveling 27.4 km to office. That's almost 3/4 of the length of Singapore. Do people always live so far from their workplace?

Such high mileage on such a small island basically indicates that people depends too much on their vehicles. You'll think that Singapore has lousy public transport! Is it a matter of pride or convenience?

ROI of multi-storey carparks

There are a total of 161 car and 41 bike lots over 4 floors of the multi-storey carpark (MSCP) near my flat. 53 car and 12 bike lots are on the top floor and thus not sheltered, but they pay the full sheltered rate nonetheless.

Assuming a 75% occupancy rate at $17 and $90 (for bike and car) per month, that works out to be $11,390.25 per month, or $136,683 per year.

I've no idea how much it takes to build a MSCP. My guess is $500k to $1 million. It'll take 5 to 10 years to break even.

Skipping season parking?

Season parking is $15 for surface lots and $17 for sheltered lots. Normal rate is $0.65 for half day parking (only day and night tabs).

Putting two coupons per day for 30.5 days means it'll cost you $39.65. If you have to use a day parking coupon anyway (for parking near your workplace, for example), it'll cost you half, or $19.85. So, it's not worth it to skip season parking.

Note that I've ignored Sundays. Assuming an average of 4.3 Sundays per month, you'll save $2.80 per month. It's still not worth it.

When is it worth skipping season parking? $17 / $0.65 = 26. In other words, you can park up to 13 day/nights or 26 nights, if you're willing to risk skipping day parking. This can be done if you have a second bike and you can park it for free, like your office, most of the time.

The season parking rate for cars is a lot higher: $65 for surface lots and $90 for sheltered lots. They used to be $55 and $75 before September 2002.

Assuming you only need to park from 8:30 pm to 7 am from Monday to Friday, it'll cost you $4 per day. Whole day parking on Saturday is $10 (special coupon). It's just $2 for Sunday (night parking). In total, you need to pay $32 per week, or $139.45 per month.

If you want to skip season parking, the most you can spend per week is $20.65.

Some things they don't teach in riding school

The riding school teaches many safety aspects, which most people then ignore in real world riding. That's unfortunate, because if you follow what the school teaches, you'll be a pretty safe rider. Slow, but very safe.

Nonetheless, there are some things the school doesn't teach you. You'll learn them if you don't get into an accident first.

Give-way junctions. One of them is the give-way junction. Not the obvious ones at most junctions, but some give-way junctions are partially obscured and it's hard to see that they are give-way junctions.

There's one at Outram road going to Seng Poh road. There's a road connecting Tiong Bahru road to Seng Poh road on the right. Strictly speaking, it's a stop sign, not a give-way sign, but you seldom see cars stop because the traffic is very light. It's easy to forget that you're on a minor road going straight into a major road and that the road on your right is really the major road. I almost always forgot to check for traffic when I'm on that road.

There's another one at the intersection of Toa Payoh lorong 6 and Kim Keat link. If you're going straight in lorong 6, you'll expect other roads turning into it will give way, since it is a major road. But in this case, Kim Keat link turning into lorong 6 has the right of way. There's a give-way sign, but it's very misleading because there's a traffic light before the intersection and when it's green, you expect to be able to go at full speed. The give-way sign is right after the traffic light.

Right turns. I hate right-turn lanes that do not have the same lanes as the road you turn into. 2 lanes turning into 3, for example. If you're on lane 2 (the left one) of a 2 lane right-turn lanes, and turning into a 3 lane road, do you turn into lane 3 (the leftmost) or lane 2 (the middle)? Riding school teaches you to turn into the same lane — lane 1 to lane 1, lane 2 to lane 2. This is seldom practised in the real world.

Even if it's 3 lane turning into 3 lanes, some drivers on lane 1 still turn into lane 2. Sometimes they do so to avoid hitting the kerb.

Wet roads. You know you can't stop as quickly on wet roads. The school teaches that. Also, in practice, you'll get a good scare out of it. And any painted or metal surfaces make you skid very easily. You won't appreciate how frightful the experience is and how easy it is to skid until you actually skid on them. Always be conservative.

Lane spilting. The school teaches you to stay in line. Most riders choose to spilt lane (riding on the white lines). This is pretty dangerous, even when the vehicles are stationary. You got to look out for cars trying to cut lane, opening their doors and jaywalkers.

Lane changing. Think you're safe if you signal and check blindspot? That's not enough on a 3-lane road. If you're changing lane into the middle lane, check that there's no vehicle changing lane from the other lane!

Other bikes. I fear other bikes more than I fear cars. If you ride in the center of a lane, as taught in the school, a bike will overtake you within the same lane. The margin is very little. I've been overtaken by two bikes, one on each side. Very dangerous. Sometimes a car tries to cut into the lane and you take evasive action by moving to the other side of the lane. There's often no time to check for blindspot and sometimes there may be a bike there. Bikes that spilt lane make it difficult to change lanes, and that's an important reason why you must check for blindspot.

Cost of bike usage

Here's a comparison how much it costs to use a bike or car. The costs are either fixed cost, which you cannot control, or variable cost, which you can control.

	1.6L car	125cc bike	400cc bike
Road tax	$950	$80	$140
Insurance (TPFT; 0% NCD)	$1500	$390	$450
Season parking	$1140	$204	$204
Petrol (10,000 km; $1.60 per litre)	$1333 (12 km/l)	$400 (40 km/l)	$640 (25 km/l)
ERP (variable; light usage)	$120	$60	$60
Other parking (variable)	$600	$20	$20
Total per year	$5643	$1154	$1514

How do I pick these? I have two bikes, one 125cc and the other 400cc. Currently I cannot ride anything higher than 400cc, but even when I can, most likely I won't change to a bigger bike. This is a reversal of my stand a year ago, where my dream bikes were a 600cc and a 900cc bike. I've simply no need for anything higher than 400cc; I use my bikes for transport, not for their pose factor. Bigger bikes are expensive to own and use. Beyond a certain age, as I've found, you become more practical and look at cars. As for the 1.6L car, I feel that's the typical tradeoff point between power and cost. A 2L car requires $600 more for road tax and maybe $200 more for insurance.

I did not include the cost of the vehicles, their COE, nor installment, if applicable. Those fall under cost of ownership; I'm looking at the cost of usage. However, it's obvious that bikes can be much cheaper than cars and it's easy to pay for them without taking any loans. The COE for bikes is currently pretty high at $1k, but it's still 1/10th of a car.

While the fixed costs (road tax, insurance and season parking) for a car is already much more expensive than for a bike ($3590 vs $674), the other part of the cost is due to petrol, ERP and parking ($2053 vs $480). The more you drive, the more expensive it is compared to riding. There's nothing to say for petrol. 12 km/l vs 40 km/l, no contest at all. ERP, bikes pay 50% less. Parking is something drivers cannot escape from. When you drive, sooner or later you got to park somewhere. And when you do, you have to pay for it. Bikes have it easy. You either park for free, or pay per entry charge (not hourly), or not allowed to park (just park somewhere nearby) or you just park illegally.

Although a 125cc and 400cc bike by themselves cost $1154 and $1514 to use respectively, it doesn't cost me $2668 to use both of them. It costs me $794 to use the 400cc bike (road tax, insurance and season parking); still a huge chunk. Actually, it's pretty obvious that I can only ride one bike at one time, so if I do not have any sub-riders (a bike can be used by two person only), I should only need to pay the higher premium of the two. I should be able to save $390 based on this! This will make it easier to own more bikes.

Despite saying earlier that I'm not interested in bigger bikes, I am interested in smaller ones. I was interested in a Vespa scooter and a Majesty 250/400 scooter at one point. I like the Vespa for its simple and retro look, and the Majesty for its huge storage space. Maybe I'll be interested in them again one day. But first, I need to sell one or both my bikes.

Taking cab instead of driving

I think cab is affordable in Singapore, unless you take it twice a day. It is often cited as an alternative to driving, which is just plain expensive. But I think a cab falls short of the mark.

Why do I say a cab is affordable? Flag down fare is $2.50, with 1 km thrown in. The next 9 km is only $4.30. The next 10 km is $5.70. That's enough to get you across half of Singapore.

The killers are the surcharges: peak period ($2), city ($1), holiday ($1), late night (50% more after midnight), ERP (from your pocket) and most of all, booking — at a whopping $4 during peak hours ($2.50 non-peak). And the roads being congested as they are at peak hours, you pay 10 cents for every 25 seconds of waiting at traffic lights. Hint: try to avoid right turns at traffic lights. You may spend $1 at just one traffic light!

So, if you manage to get a cab without having to pay any of the surcharges, taking cab is affordable.

The problem with cabs is their availability. Try flag down a cab during peak hours, in the city or when it's raining. Impossible. Waiting at taxi stands? Long queue. It's when you need them the most, you can't get them.

Is riding cheaper than public transport?

Riding is definitely cheaper than driving. But is riding cheaper than taking public transport? It depends whether your public transport includes taxi. If it does, then riding is most likely to be cheaper. If not, most likely not.

A fuel efficient bike can achieve 40 km/l. If you travel 30 km to work on weekdays, that's 1440 km per month (24 days per month). How far is 30 km? It's about half the horizontal distance of Singapore, after taking into account that roads are not straight line. You'll use up 36 litres of petrol and that would cost you about $58 for RON92 (1 litre = $1.60). For that $58, you can spend at most $2.40 on public transport per day, or $1.20 per trip. Just for comparison, a 30 km taxi trip costs $18 (off peak, flag down and no waiting at traffic lights). $1.20 lets you travel about 14 km by bus or 5 MRT stops. This makes public transport sound expensive, but it is not because bus fare is capped at $1.58 and MRT at $1.75.

But there are other expenses as well. The bike itself ($1500 to $5000), road tax ($80/year), HDB season park ($17/mth), insurance ($300 to $800/year), ERP, other parking and very likely, fines. That works out to be another $1000/year, or $83/month. $53 + $83 = $136; $5.70 per day, or $2.85 per trip. Thus, riding is only comparable if you need to take switch between two buses or bus/MRT.

Including maintenance? Changing the sparkplug, battery, tires, brake pads, chain and so on. And putting aside a little for accidents. That could be another $100 to $500 a year.

So, riding is most likely not cheaper than public transport. But that's missing the point. Riding allows you to go anywhere, any time. No waiting. That's beyond public transport.

Riding safely

Safety is the top priority when riding. There is no such thing as a minor accident for a rider. But how do you keep yourself safe?

At the most basic, keep your bike in good condition. Check that the headlights, signals, brakes and horn are working. I don't do these pre-ride checks everytime I ride — unlike what the school teaches — but I do check them from time to time. Also, pump the tires and have sufficient fuel.

Before riding, make sure you are in a reasonable mood and are not in a rush for time. Don't get angry on the road. It can lead to dangerous behaviour on the road!

When riding, remember what the school teaches: check blind spots, use turn signals, stay in line and don't speed. Some quickly forgotten stuff: slow down at junctions, slow down before traffic lights (even if they are in your favour), slow down at giveway signs, slow down before pedestrian crossings and slow down before hazards (like parked vehicles obstructing your view).

Next, it is important to ride defensively. Simply put, you should assume all the drivers may stop or change their course without any notice. On a bike, you should not insist on the right of way; there's no such thing. Also, never trust the signals! When following a car, the stopping distance is very important. It's not how fast you can go, but how fast you can stop. Unfortunately for bikes, they require a longer stopping distance than cars, so never follow too closely. This is worse for wet roads. Bikes skid easily on hard braking, so keep even further away.

The risk for riding is definitely higher than driving or taking public transport. But by riding safely, it is possible to minimize that risk. In exchange, you get much more control over your travelling, which I think is well worth it.

I have given up trying to persuade my friends to take up riding. It's very difficult to overcome the negative perception of riding. They'll do it when they suddenly find a reason to.

Getting my car license

It should have been very simple to get my car license. All I had to do was to convert my Malaysian license over. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to do so and had to sit for the final theory and road test (I had already passed the basic theory test).

I decided to enroll in a driving school to learn all the lessons from scratch, since my driving had deteriorated over the years. I took 15 lessons over 6 months. I took a lesson once a week or two, almost always 8 am in the morning. This is an off-peak period and is $10 cheaper. The lesson ends at 9:40 am and then I rush to work, reaching office at 10:10 am — riding helps. There are two reasons why I choose this timeslot: (i) the test is in the morning. I want to practise under the same conditions, (ii) I am very tired in the evenings and make a lot more mistakes. Being cheaper is a bonus.

Finally, I sat for the road test and passed!

My driving remains the same as before — still omitting blind spot checking most of the time in real driving — but I'm now much more confident about parking. The parking techniques do work in the real world! The position of the poles correspond to various positions of the car, so once you get the mapping right, they work very well. I practised my parking in Malaysia in real car park lots, with real cars beside the lot while on breakfast excursions with my father. That's how I knew the techniques worked. Even my father, with over 40 years of parking under his belt, was pretty impressed with my parking.