’ drive off-usually with a full tank of gasoline. In Singapore, when buying a new car, one has to decide well in advance when and where to drive, what size car to purchase, and whether it should carry a private or corporate license plate. Then one bids for the license to own a car, waits for the results of the auction, and, if successful, pays upwards of $60,000 for a sub-compact! And ten years later, one probably has to undergo the same gut-wrenching experience all over again. How did this come about? Singapore is an island city-state, 250 square miles in area, strategically located at the crossroads of commerce and tourism at the southern tip of the Malaysian Peninsula. With 2.7 million people, it has a very high population density of 11,000 persons per square mile. compared with only 70 per square mile in the LJnited States. Singapore enjoys the second highest standard of living in Asia (after Japan), with an export-oriented economy that is growing at a robust rate of 8.8 percent a year. From a transportation perspective. this economic success has not come without 3 price. Because the country is hot and humid, the demand for air-conditioned private transportation is high and very income-elastic: a 1 percent increase in household income results in a 2 percent increase in the number of privately owned cars. Because of the rapid rise in incomes, Singapore today has about 300,000 cars (roughly 95 percent of them privately owned) and GOO,OOO motor vehicles, resulting in a high linear density of about 320 motor vehicles per mile of road, compared with only 44 in the United States. The problem of traffic congestion in Singapore is especially acute in the central business district. By 1975, during the morning and evening rush hours, traffic crawled at an average speed of only 12 miles per hour, prompting authorities to discourage the entry of cars into the city center by instituting an area-wide system of tolls.