How can AV services change transportation in Singapore?

This is the article written by Automotive Intelligence team in KPMG Consulting.

Building on the insights presented in the previous article, the team offers further information on research trends and potential services of autonomous vehicles, along with ideas on data utilization in Singapore.

1. Research on autonomous vehicles
2. Singaporeans’ preference on private transportation
3. Real time data to solve traffic congestion
4. Autonomous vehicle systems and possible services

As an important step to introduce autonomous vehicles (AVs) without drivers as city transportation, LTA needed test requirements and standards to deploy AVs on public roads. The joint venture was established in 2017 by LTA together with some university and public corporation^*1. Although this joint venture does not directly develop new technologies for AVs, it assesses how these AV systems should operate, develop testing requirements, and establish an international standard for AVs.

AVs have been undergoing testing on public roads in the trial area covering all of the western Singapore since 2019, with drivers for safety so that they can take over immediate control of the vehicle. And these vehicles are insured with third-party liability insurance coverage. Next step will be to let AVs operate on public roads without drivers.

As shown in the previous article, Singaporeans seem to prefer private transportation to mass transportation. Contrast to the stable growth on traffic by mass transportation, the average daily number of street hail trips in 2018 was doubled in 2023. In the same year, that of ride hail trips was more than 10 times greater than the figure of street hail in 2018. 19% of rapid growth on the number of trips by reasonable ride-hail in two years shows their preference on private hired cars (PHCs).

[Table1: Average daily number of trips]

Source：Prepared by KPMG Consulting Co., Ltd. based on Land Transport Authority “Number of valid vocational license holders, taxi fleet and number of P2P vehicle trips taken” (2023, 2021, 2018)

Another interesting fact shown in the Figure1 is the decrease on the units of taxi and the increase on PHC.

In addition to the total number of vehicles on the roads, ensuring traffic efficiency is also critical. To avoid congestion, LTA has already provided a large volume of real time data^*² such as traffic images (live traffic conditions along expressways) ,traffic incidents (current accidents, vehicle breakdowns, road blocks, traffic diversions etc.) and traffic speed bands (current traffic speeds on expressways and arterial roads, expressed in speed bands).

The new On-Board Unit for the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) will be mandatory for all Singapore-registered vehicles to install, as a transition to the next generation ERP2.0 with the new Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) ^*³. LTA will obtain location data from almost all vehicles on the roads and simulate traffic in real time to predict possible congestion.

It seems that AV systems are ready to utilize such data for planning with algorithm unique to each AV operator. This is the greatest advantage of the AV systems, which are different from the PHC services as PHC is essentially a matching service. For passengers demanding private transportation, AV services won’t differ from popular PHC services if fees are reasonable. However, the AV systems can offer driving on the most efficient route based on real time data, optimizing whole traffic in the city.

Operating systems for AVs as the part of the city transportation could be differentiated not only by comfort riding of AVs as a means of transportation but also by the efficient routing to pick up customers and take them to their destinations. It is not sure yet that routing of each AV by algorithms would bring the most efficient traffic to the city, but which could be tested in the next phase when the AV systems are operated in the city.

From this point of the view, cities in Japan could have learnt data preparation and management from Singapore’s planning process for their future transportation pictures. Operation of AV systems is different from PHC operation as a matching system. AV systems have a function to set route for hundreds of vehicles at the same time.

*1: Land Transport Authority "Autonomous Vehicles"
*2:  Land Transport Authority "Data Mall"
*3:  OneMotoring by Land Transport Authority "Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) 2.0"

*Reference for Figure1: Land Transport Authority "MOTOR VEHICLE POPULATION BY VEHICLE TYPE"

KPMG Consulting
Manager, Yukie Koyano