There's the Certificate Of Entitlement (COE), a piece of very expensive legal document (costing almost $90,000 Singapore dollar at this writing) that a person has to pay in order to buy a car. There's the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) gantries that the locals call "Death Gate", where you get charged between 50 cents to $2.50 or $3 for every gantry you pass through when they are turned on. And did they deliberately make parking a problem with limited car parks and damn expensive in the city area?
There's initiatives to get more people to ditch private cars for public transport with building of more new MRT lines and stations, purchasing more buses to increase the frequency and free ride to ease the peak period congestions.
Although there are some improvements from all these initiatives, they do not actually reduces the quantity of car ownerships.
People are still buying cars despite the high COE. People are still driving during peak periods when the ERPs are on. People still park at expensive car parks, although some may still cheat by parking illegally. A car owner once said, "Since I already own the car, no point leaving it at home and use public transport just to save that few dollars." They will still drive when there's an opportunity.
So what can the government do?
Perhaps they can consider to let FIRST TIME car owners who purchase their car within one year to sell it back at the same price, i.e. without depreciation.
Some people buy cars in a moment of folly. They may feel the urge to have one because all their friends own a car. They may buy just to please or impress someone. They may buy so that they do not get looked down at. And they regret their decisions after a few months after the reality sets in.
So what do they do?
They'll try to get rid of the car. But if they are going to incur heavy losses of $20,000 to $30,000 in cash, what do you think they will do? Just hold on to the car!
So why not buy back these cars at original price? And then make it very expensive for them to buy their future cars.
I'm sure the $20,000 to $30,000 is definitely a lot more cheaper than costs of land and building more car parks, roads and highways.
P.S. The government is going to lose a lot of revenue from COE and ERP.