Good. Fuck cars.
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
51 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22654 readers
1 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Is this news? Singapore is a city of 6 million on an island that is only 45km across at its widest point.
NYC is a smaller geographic city (municipal boundaries - 5 boros) and has 2 million more residents. Try implementing this there for a tenth of the price and see if there's riots at worst, and every elected official losing their next election at best.
Your math is off somewhere. Wikipedia claims that NYC has 302 square miles of land, while Singapore has 283.
This article estimates that the cost of owning a car in NYC is $3000-$5000 per month. So, you pay for the privilege, perhaps not as much up front.
But NYC is surrounded by places you can drive to. Singapore is not. The mainland city of Johor Bahru is a relatively poor city of only 500K people, and beyond that it's farmland until you get to the Malaysian captial, more than 4 hours away. So I wouldn't expect the two cities to have the same preferences for car ownership in any case.
You don't need a car in Singapore. Very good public transport and affordable taxis.
How are taxis affordable if cars are so expensive?
Presumably because they don't apply to taxis. Singapore definitely has a licensing system, don't ask me for details.
Taxis in NYC have medallions, that are significantly more than $100k, and that makes the scarcity of taxis just enough that they are in demand but rarely unused.
Taxis in NYC have medallions, that are significantly more than $100k, and that makes the scarcity of taxis just enough that they are in demand but rarely unused.
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
SINGAPORE, Oct 4 (Reuters) - To own a car in Singapore, a buyer must bid for a certificate that now costs $106,000, equivalent to four Toyota Camry Hybrids in the U.S., as a post-pandemic recovery has driven up the cost of the city-state's vehicle quota system to all-time highs.
Singapore has a 10-year "certificate of entitlement" (COE) system, introduced in 1990, to control the number of vehicles in the small country, which is home to 5.9 million people and can be driven across in less than an hour.
In 2020, when fewer people in Singapore were driving, the price of COEs dropped to about S$30,000; a post-COVID increase in economic activity has led to more car purchases while the total number of vehicles on the road is capped at about 950,000.
The skyrocketing price puts cars firmly out of reach of most middle-class Singaporeans, putting a dent in what sociologist Tan Ern Ser said was the "Singapore Dream" of upward social mobility - having cash, a condominium and a car.
Singaporeans have been battered by persistent inflation and a slowing economy, and some are selling the cars they bought when COE prices were low to make a profit.
Jason Guan, 40, an insurance agent and father of two, said he bought his first car, a Toyota Rush, for S$65,000 in 2008, including the price of the COE.
Saved 43% of original text.