I was lucky enough to spend a week holidaying with my partner in Singapore back in early August. We did a lot of fun activities around this equatorial island and mostly survived the sweltering heat.
Of course, ever the transport engineer, I was curious to see what the mobility options were like around the city state. We certainly did our fair share of buses, trains, walking, and even driving. And, while we didn’t end up jumping on any bikes while there, we certainly took in how their cycling works over there…
We did briefly consider finding some hire-bikes and using them to do some of our travelling around. But, in looking at the bike network map for the island, it seemed that there were few cycling routes near where we were staying (downtown). Indeed, the road outside our hotel seemed downright cycle-unfriendly…
Despite this, we were intrigued with how many people we did actually see biking on many of the busy roads around the city. Many of them were your typical “road bike” aficionado – certainly sports cycling is quite popular around Singapore.
But there were also plenty of people riding far more ordinary bikes on-road as well – and not necessarily adhering to the road rules either…
Probably more intriguing was the amount of footpath cycling (including around where we were staying). Apparently it is legal for people to ride unpowered bikes and kick-scooters on footpaths in Singapore (electric ones should be on designated cycle paths or the road).
It certainly meant that you had to keep your wits about you when walking, although some were good about dinging their bells. Even shared paths you had to pay attention to where the cycling bits were.
Aside from the traffic concerns, probably one of the reasons that people were footpath riding a fair bit was the widespread presence of public share bikes around the city.
There seemed to be two main bike operators; Anywheel (green) and HelloRide (blue), both with some kind of app for activating and paying – a third operator SG Bike had stopped although you still occasionally saw their orange bikes around.
Many of the bus stops around the city had a designated yellow bike parking area nearby where people could collect and drop off their share bike.
Another thing I noticed a lot of were fold-up Brompton bikes; at one point I saw about eight in a row ride past me. In a place like Singapore this actually makes sense because (1) many people live in small apartments with limited space and (2) they often take them on the bus or train to get to places.
The other intriguing sight I came across was a cycleway inside a big shopping mall…
The indoor route even had designated pedestrian crossing points and flashing centreline lights…
Turns out that there was a cycle hub there with bike repairs, showers and parking – you could actually access it from the outside as well.
Singapore is ambitiously developing their cycling network; already they’ve got over 500km of cycle routes and plan to have 1300km by 2030. It’s probably a very necessary thing to counteract the still very busy road network they have (the public transport system can only do so much). Whether that and the various bikeshare services are enough to get more people onto bikes over there remains to be seen – at present, cycling mode share in Singapore is barely above 1%. Here’s hoping we might see some tangible growth over time…
Have you visited Singapore? What did you think of the cycling?
Good observations. As a long distance urban cyclist, I will weigh in. What we presently have as cycling facilities is not good enough. Hence cycling, by and large remains recreational at designated places rather than a serious mode of transport island wide.
I take the main roads along with fast moving motor traffic. It’s dangerous because there’s no provision for bicycles. At least I know I will be enjoying some of the best quality roads in the world to get to any place on this little island I desire fast and efficient. So far God has be kind. He knows the bicycle is friendly to this beautiful planet he’d created for us.
Riding on shared-pavements is painfully slow, obstructive and conflicting. Besides many are broken and discontinuous. Perhaps if the bicycle were given the same amount of support and care as private automobiles in our road designs, the modal share would be more than 2%.