11月27日下午，在2021亚洲青年领袖论坛“科技创新与智慧城市”主题论坛平行对话中，新加坡资讯通信发展管理局中国区司长庄庆维就“新加坡如何发展智慧交通”的话题发表了自己的观点。

摘录如下：

前三位都说了“新”，我是第四位。其实最简单，“新”就是新加坡，对吧？新加坡是一个非常小的岛国，我们总面积只有740平方公里，550万人口，数字很小，但是把这两个数字除一下就会知道，新加坡的人口密集度是每平方公里8000人。IBM 2008年提出“智慧的地球”，而新加坡在2006年的ICT国家蓝图中就已经是“智慧国2015”，比IBM早了两年。在智慧国的发展规划里面，我们的目标基本上都是一致的，即三个很简单的目标：第一，就是怎么让我们的国民活得舒服、开心，这是最重要的一点；第二，怎样让我们在新加坡的企业能够发挥他们最大的潜能；第三，怎样让政府治理达到最高的效率。所以，虽然自2006年到现在，我们的规划已经改变了很多，但目标都是大致相同的。

刚才主持人也说到新加坡面对的交通问题。你想想看，在每平方公里有8000人的这么小的面积上，怎样让人生活得舒服呢？交通确是一个很大的问题。很多人都把焦点放到技术上，其实不仅仅是技术是解决交通的一个主要问题。城市规划，比如说，怎么把这个城市功能分散开来，这是很大的一个政府规划的功能。新加坡还有其他一些很著名的手段，但是预计效果也不是太好。比如说我们的拥车证，可能是全世界最贵的一张纸了。上个月我看了一下，拥车证最高是大概9万新币，就是45万人民币。很简单来说，一辆最基本的特斯拉Model 3，你知道在新加坡要多少钱吗？一百万人民币。所以在新加坡我们用不同的手段来解决拥车的问题，技术也是其中的一个手段。比如说，我们也是全世界最先推出电子收费系统的国家，这套系统已经从第一代更换到第二代了。

但是，未来规划肯定也是需要往无人驾驶方面发展的。因为这可以让现有的道路容量翻倍。作为政府，智能驾驶或无人驾驶其实是一把双刃剑。对于新加坡来说，我们也要考虑到无人驾驶未来可能会带来的一些社会问题。最重要的一点，比如说，从小我妈就说你不念书，以后就要去扫马路，无人驾驶推出来之后，我连扫马路都扫不了了，都有机器人在帮我扫。我要去送快递也没有工作可做，人家都是自动化的。我去工厂也没有岗位，因为都是机器人在工作。那怎么去解决这些问题？另外一方面，所有的企业都说缺少人才，缺少开发人员。那么，作为政府，我们就需要考虑怎么去平衡这两边的需求，怎么去确保现在的司机职业再培训，让某些司机开始变成程序员，这方面我们投入了很大的资金和补贴。

另外一痛点可能就是在数据安全方面。大家都非常关注在完全自动化的情况下，无人驾驶需要收集大量的数据，这些数据怎么去保护和利用是一个很大的问题。以前一个简单的车祸，一个勘察员就可以简单地解决是谁的错。但是在未来，如果发生车祸的话，基本上就要像对待飞机失事一样，去分析黑匣子，去分析这些数据，这需要一个全新的能力。现在问题是每个国家，包括新加坡都缺乏这样的人才。要培养这些人才需要一段时间，怎样从现在开始去培养这方面人才是个很重要的课题。



On 27 November, Chng Ken-Wei, Centre Director (China) at Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore, recounted Singapore’s traffic issues at the Technology Innovation and Smart City Forum of the Asia Youth Leaders Forum 2021.

The full speech is as below.

Singapore is in fact a very small island country. Our country occupies a territory of only 740 square kilometers, with a population of 5.5 million. The numbers are very small. But if you divide the latter number by the former one, you'll know that the population density of Singapore is around 8,000 people per square kilometer. 

IBM proposed "Smarter Planet" in 2008, while Singapore, in 2006, adopted "Intelligent Nation 2015" as our national ICT blueprint, which was two years earlier than IBM. The development plans of Smarter Planet and Intelligent Nation 2015 basically have the same goals, three very simple goals. The first is how to make our citizens live a comfortable and happy life, which is the most important. The second is how to enable enterprises in Singapore to reach their full potential. The third is how to make governance most efficient. Although our plan has changed a lot since 2006, the goals basically stay the same.

Try to think about how to make people live comfortably on such a small area, where there are 8,000 people on each square kilometer of land. Traffic is a big problem in Singapore. Many people focus on technology for solutions, but technology, in fact, is not the main solution to traffic problems; urban planning is. For example, how to decentralize the functions of the city is a big role of government planning. Singapore has some other famous solutions – or maybe undesirable solutions. The Certificate of Entitlement (COE) is probably the most expensive paper in the world. Last month I checked the COE prices. The highest is about SGD90,000, which amounts to RMB450,000. To make it more specific, do you know how much a basic Tesla Model 3 costs in Singapore? RMB1,000,000. In Singapore, we have different solutions to the problem of car ownership; technology is one of them. We had the first electronic toll collection (ETC) system in the world. Now it's obsolete, so we've been upgrading it to the second generation. Future planning will surely move towards autonomous driving, because this can double the capacity of existing roads. 

However, smart driving or autonomous driving is actually a double-edged sword to a government. In Singapore, we have to consider some social issues that autonomous driving may cause in the future. Here is perhaps the most important one. My mother used to say that I would be a street cleaner if I did not have a good education. When autonomous driving is launched, I can't even clean the road. A robot is doing this for me. And I can't work as a courier because everything is automated. I can't work in a factory as well because everything is done by robots. So how should we solve these problems? On the other hand, all the companies say that they are short of talented people or short of developers. So, a government needs to think about how to balance demands and supplies on both sides. How to ensure, for example, vocational retraining for some drivers to become programmers? We've spent a large sum of money and subsidies on this.

Another pain point, I think, is data security. Everyone is concerned about the massive amount of data collected during fully autonomous driving. How to protect and use this data is a big issue. Besides, in the past, for instance, an insurance investigator could simply figure out who should be responsible for a simple car accident. In the future, however, if there's a car accident, it should be investigated like an air crash. How to analyze the black box and the data inside calls for a brand-new set of capabilities. The problem is that every country, including Singapore, is in the shortage of such talents. It will take a while to groom them. Therefore, how to groom these talents now is a very important subject.