Roads
Many parts of Singapore, including
islands such as Sentosa and Jurong Island are accessible by
road. The other major form of transportation within Singapore is rail:
the Mass Rapid Transit which runs the length and width of Singapore,
and the Light Rail Transit which runs within a few neighbourhoods.
Singapore’s road network connects all
corners of the island with more than 9,000 land-km of roads and expressways.
LTA builds, manages and maintains this extensive network and infrastructure.
With roads already occupying 12 per cent of our total land area, LTA takes into
account the projected growth in both existing and future areas to plan road use
carefully.
To achieve a vision of a car-lite nation,LTA prioritise movement for the
masses, with priority lanes for buses and efforts to improve
first-and-last-mile connectivity to our public transport hubs.
LTA also manages vehicle ownership and usage to ensure that the traffic flows
smoothly and efficiently.
The Expressways of
Singapore is a network of controlled-access highways that spans
throughout the city-state of Singapore. Construction of the
system was authorized when construction of the Pan Island Expressway began
in 1962. All of them are dual carriageways with grade-separated access.
They usually have three to four lanes in each direction, although
there are two-lane carriageways at many expressway intersections and five-lane
carriageways in some places.
Construction on the first expressway,
the Pan Island Expressway, was completed in 1969. As of 2014, there are
ten expressways in Singapore totalling 163 kilometres (101 mi).
In addition to the main expressways,
there are also five semi-expressways: Bukit Timah Road, Jurong Island
Highway, Nicoll Highway, the Outer Ring Road System (ORRS)
and West Coast Highway. These semi-expressways are scaled down versions of
the main expressways. Semi-expressways do not have a uniform speed limit
through its entire length, and some sections still feature traffic light
controlled junctions, such as the eastern section of the ORRS, some of Bukit
Timah, the southern section of the Jurong Island Highway and the western
sections of Nicoll Highway and West Coast Highway. Still, just like
expressways, semi-expressways allow motorists to travel quickly from one urban
area to another with the use of viaducts, overpasses and tunnels.
Features
Like all other global controlled-access
expressway network, there are no traffic lights on the expressways. At
an interchange with another road, an expressway is connected to it
via slip roads. This allows traffic to change routes without having to stop or
slow down. Due to the need to conserve space in land-scarce Singapore, there
are no cloverleaf interchanges on the entire island as they are too
large. Instead, traffic efficiency and land space are maximized by having
traffic lights on terrestrial roads, as well as the usage of interchanges such
as stack interchanges. The most common forms of highway-road or
highway-highway intersections are single-point urban, diamond,
and trumpet interchanges. Newer expressways such as the Kallang-Paya Lebar
Expressway and the future North South Corridor uses on-ramps and off-ramps to
conserve space even further and minimize disruption to the road system, through
the construction of viaducts and tunnels.