UBER'S IMPACT ON SINGAPORE'S CAR-LITE SOCIETY

Abstract

In 2015, the Singapore government announced its new vision for Singapore – to achieve a car-lite society. This vision was timely announced with the emergence of the sharing economy as well as Uber’s disruption. Given that the Singapore government has chosen to regulate but not ban Uber, this paper evaluates Uber’s impact on Singapore’s car-lite society, focusing on three areas; traffic congestion, first-last mile commute and car ownership.

This paper evaluated these three areas through a qualitative analysis coming from the perspective of Uber passengers. Surveys were conducted to capture Uber users’ travel patterns, current and future opinions. The snowball sampling method was selected as it was the best alternative.

Findings revealed that Uber likely contributed to traffic congestion, although its current impact is small. In America, Uber has contributed positively in complementing public transportation through serving commuters first-last mile commute. However, results from the study in Singapore did not yield similar outcomes. With regards to car ownership, it was found that Uber managed to influence a sizeable proportion of young families to delay their plans for purchasing a car. Results from this study pointed out the main directions that Uber may have some contribution in. This study serves more of an exploratory role into these three issues and calls for more in-depth studies through industry collaborations: Uber and Land Transport Authority to quantify the possible impacts.