SINGAPORE: Close to 80 Singaporeans have been detained under the Internal Security Act for terrorism-related activities since 2002, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

These statistics are just the most recent indicators of how the terror threat to Singapore continues to remain at its highest levels in years, despite Islamic State (IS) losses in the Middle East and the defeat of IS-linked militants in Marawi in the Philippines.

“Security agencies in the regional countries have equally been ramping up their efforts to counter, and have been arresting a lot of people,” said Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam in an interview with Channel NewsAsia.

“We have been arresting more people. So I would say that the threats had increased substantially a few years ago, and they continue at a high level. And we must expect that as the kinetic fighting in the Middle East dies down, you will expect them to pop up in other places including Southeast Asia.”

Key to the threat lies in effective use of online propaganda by militants, aimed squarely at the Malay Muslim community in Singapore and the region. In September, a propaganda video featuring Singaporean militant Megat Shahdan Abdul Samad came to light, where he called on viewers to join IS fighters in the Middle East and East Asia. Jihadist publications have also identified Singapore as a key target for attack, according to the MHA’s inaugural Terrorism Threat Assessment Report released in July.

And despite Singapore’s emphasis on racial and religious harmony, the period of time it takes to become radicalised is also getting shorter, said Mr Shanmugam.

“Now sometimes it’s a matter of days. Prior to that, there is exposure to a line of thought, a type of religious teaching that predisposes one towards becoming radicalised. And the kind of people you come in contact with, the thoughts they convey to you. That’s a problem all over the world, including Singapore.”

STEPPED UP SECURITY

Faced with threats from beyond and within Singapore’s borders, the Singapore Police Force has restructured its systems and stepped up its capabilities in recent months. The efforts to improve the effectiveness of the police force will continue into 2018, said Director of Operations, Assistant Commissioner (AC) How Kwang Hwee.

More manpower has been dedicated to specialised units that could go toe-to-toe with armed terrorist aggressors, such as the Emergency Response Teams, Rapid Deployment Troops, and the recently-deployed In-Situ Reaction Teams. Even frontline officers – who are more likely to fight crime than heavily-armed terrorists – have seen their traditional revolvers replaced with automatic pistols capable of greater firepower since April.

“We will continue to be plugged in to what is happening globally and regionally, the threats that we face, the types of terror attacks that are happening,” said AC How.

“As we observed in recent times, terrorists have started to use common tools – knives, vehicles – for their attacks, and we have to be prepared to respond to such attacks in Singapore. We look at what overseas forces do in response to attacks in their country – in London, in New York, in Paris. We learn from them, we adapt our tactics, our training and our response protocols to deal with some of these attacks of concern.”

AC How added that technology has also been leveraged on heavily to complement ground forces, amid growing manpower pressures. This includes the continued rollout of the PolCam 2.0 CCTV projects across the island, and the use of unmanned vehicles both over land and sea to improve surveillance capabilities.

But he also noted that prolonged vigilance can take its toll on security forces, and careful management is needed for them to stay effective.

“Even as we ramp up our readiness, our exercises, our training, we put in place a system where officers are rotated across duties so they don’t get fatigue. Even in a particular shift they are deployed, we pay attention to how the shift system works, the amount of time they are deployed, the amount of time to rest, as well as conducting exercise when they are on duty, to keep them on their toes, to up the readiness, such that when a real attack happens, we are ready to respond,” said AC How.

SGSECURE: MUCH WORK ACCOMPLISHED, MORE REMAINS TO BE DONE

Going forward, authorities say the wider public also needs to play a bigger role in complementing and supporting security efforts. Ahead of the one-year anniversary of the anti-terror SGSecure movement, Mr Shanmugam had said in September that there was “still some way to go” in preparing Singaporeans for any terror attack.

To date, about 200,000 households have been engaged by the authorities under a slew of SGSecure initiatives such as Emergency Preparedness Days – with another 800,000 remaining. On the business front, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) launched its SGSecure at Workplaces programme in September to have 30,000 SGSecure-engaged companies by 2020. Among other things, it encourages firms to appoint and register an SGSecure representative with the ministry to serve as a key point of contact.

An MOM spokesperson told Channel NewsAsia that since the launch, over 600 SGSecure representatives have been registered with the ministry, and more than 700 companies have implemented risk management plans that address terror threats.

“MOM is working with associations in the five priority sectors (i.e. F&B, retail, hospitality, entertainment and transport) and building owners to get more companies to be SGSecure-ready in 2018. The recent Exercise Heartbeat, a simulated terror attack jointly organised by the Singapore Police Force and MOM held at the Clarke Quay area, is an example of how we work with businesses to sensitise their staff and test their preparedness,” said the spokesperson.

The figures are a fraction of the over 314,000 firms in Singapore, as of the end of November 2017, according to latest figures from the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority. But Mr Shanmugam said such efforts should be seen in the context of the size of the task at hand.

“In an ideal world, everyone will be trained and ready today. But is that realistic? Given the number of companies, establishments, and given that we are and have been a very safe place, the first and most difficult task is getting people to understand that this is real and this is serious,” said Mr Shanmugam.

“What we’re trying to do is to try and get this message down to pretty much every citizen, every household, every company, and then get people trained. It’s a massive task. You can’t just wave a magic wand and say it’s done.”

And as much as security forces could suffer from fatigue, Mr Shanmugam also noted the possibility of complacency from the community – stemming from constant messaging efforts.

“That is a real issue, particularly in the context that Singapore is one of the safest places in the world,” said Mr Shanmugam. “People feel totally safe – there hasn’t been a terror attack, and therefore it is not easy for people to comprehend that this is really very serious.”

“And given that we’ve been talking about it now for a few years, yes – people might start thinking ‘well yes it is high’ – (but) it’s not that they don’t believe us, they might accept that it is high – but routine sets in. We just have to keep ploughing on, we just have to keep sending out the message, we just have to keep training people. You don’t want the alternate situation – a lot of people get sensitised very quickly to the risk if there is an attack and people die.”

OPEN LINES OF COMMUNICATION, UNDERSTANDING AND RESPECT

Deputy Head of International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Dr Jolene Jerard, said that on the part of the authorities, the pace of efforts to date have been commendable.

She also noted efforts to build on the mutual respect and understanding between racial and religious communities – which moved beyond tolerance, to understanding and acceptance of practices and beliefs. These included community dialogues and sharing sessions between leaders and members of the various groups held throughout the year.

“With that conversation, it then opens doors to discussions between not only having a unified message of standing together and being united in the face of terrorism, but also looking at it in parallel – wherein you are having conversations on the challenges (such as) the element of Islamophobia, for example,” said Dr Jerard.

Such efforts are set to be backed by tougher laws next year against those who incite hatred and ill will among different faith groups, in order to safeguard religious harmony.

SINGAPORE: The first thing that Madam Milah Bakri reaches for, as she fires up the stove and gets down to cooking us a Buginese meal, is not the oil for the pan. It’s a cup of water and two cups’ worth of coconut milk.

“Singaporeans use a lot of oil in their cooking,” she says, “but when the Bugis cook, most of the dishes use no oil at all. We use more coconut milk instead.”

It’s our introduction to Buginese cuisine and what makes it distinct from the standard Malay home-cook’s fare. For instance, on a table behind the 55-year-old is a large stack of young banana leaves – softer and in a vibrant shade of green, unlike the older, darker leaves that are more often used.

But the younger leaves, like Buginese home-cooking, are becoming increasingly rare these days, as the current generation struggles to find the time, inclination and sometimes ingredients to make these heritage dishes.

Indeed, the irony is that Mdm Milah isn’t actually Buginese. There was even a time she didn’t particularly enjoy the culture’s way of cooking, like how the liberal use of coconut milk makes almost every dish “very thick, very creamy”, she said.

Then four years ago, she was in her husband’s Malaysian hometown on the second day of Hari Raya. They were feasting on an array of traditional Bugis dishes such as burasak and nassu manu likku, when he turned to her and said: “How good it would be if I could have Bugis dishes back home!”

She was embarrassed. She saw it as her duty to be able to serve his favourite food, but her own family background was Javanese, and traditional Bugis food was rare in Singapore.

She knew about the Buginese people (Ogik in the Bugis language) – an ethnic group from the southwestern province of Sulawesi, Indonesia – and had listened to her husband’s stories of how his sea-nomad ancestors settled in Singapore and the Malay Peninsula as traders in the 1600s.

Read: 5 things that might surprise you to learn about the Bugis

But when it came to food, her husband Mr Ibrahim Ariff was not exactly an expert, as he had never stepped into the kitchen. So with the help of cookbooks, Google and occasional phone calls to her in-laws, Mdm Mila set about learning how to prepare Bugis dishes – six of which she has mastered to date. (See three recipes below)

No one is happier than Mr Ibrahim. “I don’t need to go to Johor, Sulawesi or Jakarta for these dishes anymore,” he said, beaming, as he looked at his wife adoringly. “They are now available at home.”

NO YOUNG BANANA LEAVES, NO BUGIS COOKING

Ask Mr Ibrahim to score his wife’s home-cooked Bugis food, and he gives it a confident 99.5 per cent. But where did the other 0.5 per cent go?

“Young banana leaves,” he said. “You can’t get young banana leaves in Singapore.”

The leaf in question features heavily in Bugis cooking – it is a must-have to make burasak, the Bugis version of a ketupat. While ketupat is wrapped with coconut leaves, a burasak is a rectangular rice dumpling encased in banana leaf.

Young leaves are thinner and easier to fold; older leaves tend to crack easily.

“You would have to soften the leaves first if you use old ones,” said Mdm Milah, who does so by gently passing the leaves over the stove’s flame. “When the banana leaf changes to a dark green colour, that’s when you know it’s really soft.”

The other problem with older leaves, however, is that that they infuse the dumplings after steaming with a yellow colour. The desired colour is a pleasant shade of light green – which only young banana leaves can produce.

According to Mdm Milah, it is possible to order the latter in bulk from suppliers in Johor Bahru, but it requires two to three days’ notice. “That’s why not many people in Singapore like to make burasak – because of the difficulty in getting the leaves,” she said.

This proved true when CNA Insider went hunting for them in several wet markets and supermarkets in Singapore, including at Geylang Serai and the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre. Older banana leaves were in abundance, but mention young leaves and you’d be dismissed with a shake of the head.

The prized leaves were located at Tekka Market eventually, at a stall that sells only banana leaves.

PLENTY OF COCONUT MILK, BUT EVEN MORE PATIENCE

The one thing that Mdm Milah and Mr Ibrahim agree makes Bugis food distinctively different from Javanese or Singaporean-style Malay cooking today, is the generous use of coconut milk.

“It’s a three-to-one ratio,” said Mdm Milah. “For Malaysian and Singaporean cooking, we use a small carton of coconut milk, but a medium-sized carton of coconut milk may be used in Bugis cooking.”

She attributed this to the Buginese’s need to keep food for a longer period of time, in order to last for long sea voyages in the past. What also helped was long cooking times.

“The longer you cook, the longer you can keep. A lot of coconut milk is used in the burasak, hence you can keep it for two to three weeks,” she said. There is none used in ketupat.

Burasak is cooked twice. First, jasmine rice is cooked in a pan together with coconut milk, and then packed into the young banana leaves and boiled for another six to eight hours. The result? Melt-in-the-mouth rice parcels infused with the fragrance of young banana leaves and coconut milk.

The flattened dumplings are unexpectedly filling, because of the coconut milk. And for Mdm Milah, they are paired perfectly with nassu manu likku, or blue ginger chicken.

Blue ginger, or galangal, is another ingredient often used in Bugis cuisine as a thickener. It also gives the dish a spicy aroma and flavour.

The chicken is cooked on the stove in a spice mix for at least one-and-a-half hours – with constant stirring to prevent the oil in the coconut milk from separating – until the sauce is thick and creamy.

You have to stand in front of your stove and have patience. It’s not like the normal Singaporean food that takes half an hour to cook,

said Mdm Milah. The amount of waiting involved, she added, is another factor that discourages people from preparing and selling Bugis dishes in Singapore. “You have to wake up overnight to prepare the dishes for the morning.”

For Mr Ibrahim’s friend, Mr Mohamad Jamal, a 37-year-old third-generation Bugis, it’s impossible to think of making burasak and nassu manu likku on a normal day.

“It’s a recipe from a different time,” he said. “We don’t have that kind of luxury now to cook these amazing dishes because of its complexity and time needed.”

REVIVING THE BUGIS CULTURE

Dinner is finally ready after a full half-day of preparation, and we all tuck in. Scooping some barongko – a traditional Bugis banana kueh made with saba bananas, coconut milk, condensed milk and eggs – into his mouth, Mr Ibrahim closes his eyes in content and gives a thumbs up.

“This is my favourite dish. Even my mother never made this for me – only my wife would. This is why I love her so much,” he teased. “My one and only honey!”

For him, the sense of wistful nostalgia goes beyond the taste of the dishes he used to eat as a child. Reviving the Bugis culture and educating Singaporeans about his ethnic group is a mission close to Mr Ibrahim’s heart.

If you ask anyone about Bugis, they will say it’s the name of a street. Bugis Street, Bugis Junction. It’s very sad.

“It is important to tell Singaporeans that Bugis is a community, a living person,” he said.

He recently published a book, The Bugis in Singapore, and is a contributor of artifacts for the ongoing exhibition, Sirri na Pesse: Navigating Bugis Identities in Singapore at the Malay Heritage Centre.

As for Mdm Milah, she is dedicated to learning more about Bugis cooking for the sake of her children. “They love it because of the spices and how thick the sauces are,” she said. “I will slowly pass on to them what I know.”

RECIPE #1: BUGIS RICE DUMPLING (BURASAK)

This recipe makes about 8-10 dumplings.

INGREDIENTS

2.5 rice cups jasmine rice

1.5 rice cups coconut milk

2 rice cups of water

2 pieces bay leaves

Pinch of salt

10 8×5-inch pieces of young banana leaves

2 13×10-inch pieces of young banana leaves

MAKE THE BURASAK

1. Wash the rice 3 times.

2. In a pot over medium heat, add water, coconut milk and bay leaves.

3. When the mixture boils, add the rice. “You must use jasmine rice so that the grains will stick together,” says Mdm Milah

Stir continuously and cook rice until mixture is fully absorbed. “The mixture must be half cooked, because you will boil for another 5-8 hours.”

4. Transfer to a bowl to cool.

5. Wrap 2 tablespoons of rice in the 8×5-inch young banana leaf.

6. Wrap five to 6 burasak in the larger leaf and secure with string.

7. Boil bundles for 3-6 hours.

RECIPE #2: BLUE GINGER CHICKEN (NASSU MANU LIKKU)

This recipe serves 4.

INGREDIENTS

For the spice paste:

6 shallots

3 cloves garlic

5 candlenut

2 stalks lemongrass

For the ginger blend:

3cm piece of blue ginger (60g)

3cm piece of yellow ginger

For the blue ginger chicken:

1 whole chicken, in pieces

2 cups coconut milk

2 cups water

2 tablespoon white pepper

1 tablespoon coriander powder

1 tablespoon turmeric

½ tablespoon seasoning

1.5 tablespoon assam water

2 turmeric leaves

3 lime leaves

3 bay leaves

½ cup toasted coconut

MAKE THE BLUE GINGER CHICKEN

1. Clean and remove fat from chicken. “Especially the bits underneath the drumsticks that make the dish smelly,” says Mdm Milah.

2. Blend shallots, garlic and candlenut; set aside.

3. Blend yellow and blue ginger; set aside. “Blue ginger is spicier than yellow ginger.”

4. In a pot over medium heat, boil water and coconut milk

5. Add spice blend, ginger blend, chicken pieces, white pepper, coriander powder, turmeric and stir. Mdm Milah says that Bugis cooking uses white pepper instead of chilli for a spicy kick.

6. When mixture boils, add seasoning, assam water, turmeric leaves, lime leaves, bay leaves.

7. Stir for another hour until sauce is thick.

8. Garnish with turmeric leaves and red chilli. 

RECIPE #3: BUGINESE SABA BANANA KUEH (BARONGKO)

This recipe makes about 8 to 10 banana kuehs.

INGREDIENTS

13 ripe saba bananas

4 eggs

60g sugar

1-2 tablespoon of condensed milk

2-3 drops of vanilla essence

2 cups of coconut milk

13 8×6-inch young banana leaves

13 2×3-inch young banana leaves

MAKE THE SABA BANANA KUEHS

1. Peel and cut saba bananas into half. Using a knife, carve out as much of the seeds as possible. This will make the kueh look more presentable, says Mdm Milah.

2. Blend bananas and coconut milk together, making sure there are no chunks. Put the banana mixture in a bowl.

3. Blend eggs, sugar, condensed milk. “When blending the bananas and coconut milk, it’s already very heavy. That’s why I blend (the eggs) separately.”

4. Combine the egg mixture and banana mixture in the same bowl. Add vanilla essence and mix well.

5. Take a large piece of banana leaf, fold it in half. Take one corner and fold it towards the middle. Grab the flaps at the sides and fold downwards.

6. Open up the middle of the leaf to form a packet for the kueh batter.

7. Pour about 3 tablespoons of batter into the packet. Carefully, fold the other side of the banana leaf inwards, then fold the top edge down to seal.

8. Using a smaller piece of banana leaf, cover the top of the packet. Secure it with a toothpick. Repeat.

9. Put the banana leaf packets in a steamer and steam for 20 to 25 minutes. “Barongko is even nicer chilled. You can eat it for breakfast with some tea,” says Mdm Milah.

Know a home cook who is keeping alive a vanishing aspect of preparing traditional recipes? Tell CNA Insider on Facebook. 

Check out our series on vanishing home recipes.

SINGAPORE: The trial of a multidirectional or scramble crossing similar to the one in Tokyo’s bustling Shibuya district began in Orchard Road on Saturday (Dec 16), and it was generally well-received by pedestrians.

For the first time, shoppers can cross the intersection of Orchard Road and Cairnhill Road diagonally. This leads them from the junction where H&M is located directly to the corner where the Heeren building stands.

Two auxiliary police officers were seen guiding pedestrians and there were new markings on the road indicating where the diagonal crossing was.

When Channel NewsAsia went down to the intersection on Saturday afternoon, most pedestrians said they welcomed the initiative. Many, however, said they were not aware that a scramble crossing was in operation.

Crowds were initially thin due to the afternoon rain but once it stopped, the regular crossing from Mandarin Gallery to H&M became jam packed with pedestrians once again and it was noticeably busier than the new diagonal crossing.

One pedestrian, 17-year-old Naomi Huth, said: “I was in Shibuya earlier this year and I think the lines on the street were more obvious … We didn’t see it (the Orchard crossing), that’s why we only took the normal crossing. If it were a lot more obvious I think more people would use it.”

Others, like 34-year-old Kwet Tze Lin, said the waiting time to cross the road was shorter. “We can just conveniently cross and not have to wait for the traffic so long,” added the finance manager. One pedestrian was seen taking a photo in the middle of the diagonal crossing.

The trial comes at a time when the Orchard Road Business Association is trying to revive the shopping belt, improve connectivity and make it easier for people to move around.

The owner of Ange Café at Glasshouse by DHM, located on the second floor of Heeren, believes the scramble crossing could bring more business.

“Now people have direct access instead of having to cross two roads. It’s far more convenient just to be able to cross once,” said Ms Angela May.

“This area has always been fantastic for people-watching and now you’re getting all of this activity and people literally scrambling across the street.”

She noted that the side of the road where her restaurant is located tends to be quieter compared to the opposite end where H&M is, and said the crossing could make it easier for shoppers to cross over.

The crossing will be trialled on all weekends and public holidays until Jan 28.

SINGAPORE: For the past two years, Dr Niranjan Nagarajan has been swabbing Singapore’s public spaces, from park benches to handrails at MRT stations, to study microbes present in urban areas that may make people sick.

There was one study, however, that this associate director at the Genome Institute of Singapore thought would be “scientifically very interesting to look at” and had not been done here, as far as he knew.

And that is to find out how dirty Singapore’s banknotes are. As his colleague Swaine Chen put it, money should be considered to be “just like another public surface”.

One such study in New York City, published earlier this year, found as many as 3,000 types of bacteria lurking on US$1 notes, including bacteria known to cause skin infections, gastric ulcers and food poisoning.

United States notes are made of cotton and linen, materials that support bacterial growth, while most of Singapore’s notes are made of polymer, which is less absorbent besides being able to incorporate security features that paper and cloth-based notes cannot.

Polymer notes can also last three to four times longer than paper money, according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore. But then is the Republic’s money as sanitary as it is durable?

That theory has now been put to the test on Channel NewsAsia’s Why It Matters programme. Its producers sent 300 samples of money to laboratories, to find out how clean they were. And the results seemed alarming. (Watch the episode.)

LIKE TOILET SEATS, SHOE SOLES

Some of the notes carried as much bacteria as found on the soles of shoes and on toilet seats – as well as more bacteria than on a smartphone and even the few “thriving colonies” on a kitchen sponge.

Those were the findings of senior lecturer and researcher Simon Tan, from the Singapore Polytechnic’s School of Chemical and Life Sciences.

The high bacterial count had to do with where the money was collected: Hawker centres, hospitals, supermarkets and wet markets across the country, with a good geographical spread.

Microbiologists from testing service provider ALS Singapore had processed the bacteria on the notes collected from over 100 locations, with money withdrawn from automated teller machines (ATMs) used as a comparison. The denominations ranged from S$2 to S$50.

And of all the samples, money from the wet markets had the highest bacterial count: An average of 48,000 on each note, which was almost 1,000 times more bacteria than the S$50 and S$10 notes fresh from the ATMs.

Notes from hawker centres had a bacterial count of 3,500, while it was 1,000 per note when it came to hospitals. Notes from supermarkets had an average count of 120.

Separately, an analysis was done on a single S$10 note to find out what DNA was left on it. The test revealed traces of animals like cattle, dog, fish, pig and sheep, besides human DNA and a lot of bacteria.

WET NOTES ATTRACT BACTERIA

Dr Chen, a senior research scientist, said the stalls selling raw meat and raw fish were the ones where the notes had the most bacteria from cross-contamination.

He contrasted this with places “not dealing with food, where they’re just storing cash”, such as ATMs and cash registers in supermarkets.

All bacteria need water to grow, he noted, so the “kinds of environments where bacteria tend to thrive are warm, moist, sometimes dark”.

He added: “If you have a wet note, and then it’s in your wallet, probably your body heat is providing the kind of perfect environment for bacteria to grow, as opposed to a dry note that was just warm.”

Watch: The investigation (2:28)

The question is how harmful these bacteria are. And here, Dr Chen said it was worth remembering that people come into contact with bacteria continually. “Things like yogurt and cheese have an awful lot of bacteria,” he pointed out.

According to him, it is not only the amount of bacteria but also the type that matters.

DEPENDS ON VIRULENCE, IMMUNE SYSTEM

In this case, one of the bacteria identified, E. Coli, is already found in the body, residing mainly in the gut, though certain strains can cause severe diarrhoea.

The bacterium staphylococcus, however, can be more serious. It is known to cause meningitis, which is the inflammation of the lining of the brain. “Some pathogenic strains may cause compromised patients to die in hospital,” warned Dr Tan.

“But if you happen to take a little bit of this, and you have a fully functional immune system as well as a digestive tract, you’d be okay.”

The bacteria can enter the body through a wound or be ingested if a person rubs his eyes or eats food using the same fingers that touched the notes, so washing one’s hands after handling money is advisable.

One thing is certain: More money is changing hands these days in Singapore, the world’s third-richest country. In the last four years, the value of notes in circulation increased from S$30.3 billion to S$42.5 billion as at March 31.

If all these notes are put side by side, they would go round Singapore’s coastline 633 times.

Said Dr Nagarajan: “Notes are constantly being exchanged between people, and it has a potential to transfer microbes to the recipient. And because of this, it’s of public health importance to understand what’s going on.”

Watch this episode of Why It Matters here (new episodes every Monday). 

SINGAPORE: The Land Transport Authority announced in October that Singapore will drop the allowable vehicle growth rate from 0.25 per cent to zero next year.

There will be no new Certificate of Entitlements (COEs) added to the market, so the COEs available in each bidding exercise will come solely from the number of deregistered vehicles.

Many expect COE prices to face upward pressure when the new regulation takes place.

Such a change has raised concerns about the impact on car ownership, already a pricey affair in Singapore. While the immediate repercussions on car prices have captured public attention, effects may be further-reaching.

For one, this new policy has been made in tandem with the massive expansion of the MRT network to many parts of Singapore in recent years, with a further increase of the total track length to 360km by 2020 expected, according to LTA’s long-term plan.

Taken together, these seem like a concerted push to nudge the population to give up their cars and take public transport.

But if delays and disruptions continue to plague the MRT system, then what these moves mean is that the options for a daily commute into the city have just gotten worse for Singapore residents as a whole – one pricier and one less reliable.

KNOCK-ON IMPACT ON HOUSING

This reduction of the vehicle growth rate could impact not only Singaporeans’ transport mode calculus, but also their housing decisions in the longer term.

If car ownership becomes still more expensive and public transport reliability cannot be reasonably assured, the rational decision would be to live where getting around is as convenient as possible and the need for transport is minimised – near the city centre.

Hence, demand for housing in those areas and their consequent prices may see knock-on effects.

Empirical studies of COE and private housing prices bear this out. Our research found that when COE premiums increased, the price of private housing close to the central business district (CBD) also increased.

Where the COE premium increased from S$10,000 to S$40,000, like it did between 2009 and 2010, private apartments within 10km of the CBD saw their prices rise by approximately 8.37 per cent over the same period. 

However, the same increase in the COE premium is associated with only a 2.19 per cent increase in housing prices for private apartments 10km or further from the city centre.

INCREASE IN HOUSING PRICES NEAR THE CBD

Such differential impact on housing prices throughout Singapore result from public transport being more convenient closer to the city centre, mainly because transport networks including rail, buses and taxis are denser, with a higher frequency of services.

In neighbourhoods further from the CBD where public transport options are not as extensive, such as Jurong, housing is not likely to see significant price increases.

There are similar findings suggesting Singapore residents are willing to pay more to be closer to an MRT station when COE prices go up, so as to reduce their reliance on last-mile public transport to an MRT station. Private apartments 1km to MRT stations in Singapore see some increase when COE prices go up but less so for those further away.

ENHANCE TRANSPORT OPTIONS IN TOWNS FAR AWAY FROM THE CBD

With the vehicle growth rate reduced to zero, the increase in housing prices is expected be the largest for apartments closest to the city centre. Those living further from the CBD are likely to continue to rely on a car for transport and thus will have no choice but to accept the higher COE premiums, particularly if they do not live close to a MRT station. 

While policymakers are concerned about keeping traffic and congestion low, they must pay attention to the effects of transport policies on housing prices as well. 

This is particularly so if the inequality gap grows, with those living further away from the CBD saddled both by higher transport costs – whether they own a car or face longer commutes on public transport – and lower appreciation in the value of their homes.

One way to combat the impact of rising COE prices on housing prices is to enhance public transport options in towns further away from the CBD with more new bus routes and greater service frequency.

If public transport options to the CBD were more reliable, the increase in housing prices close to the city centre is likely to be more moderate.

With eight in 10 households projected to live within 10 minutes of a train station by 2030, and shorter MRT opening hours to allow for the acceleration of resignalling works, commuters and home-owners will be waiting to see if this prediction comes to pass.

Amanda Ross is assistant professor of economics at the University of Alabama. Li Jing and Naqun Huang are assistant professors of economics at the Singapore Management University.