ELECTRONIC ROAD PRICING CHARGES

ELECTRONIC ROAD PRICING CHARGES:

(Improper payment by motorists): 13.

Mr Seah Kian Peng asked the Minister for Transport what action is taken to address the current problems faced by many motorists with respect to being fined for improper payment of Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) charges given that they may be attributed to faulty CashCards, In-vehicle units or ERP gantries.

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Mrs Lim Hwee Hua (for the Minister for Transport): Sir, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the Network for the Electronic Transfers (Singapore) Pte Ltd (NETS) are working closely together to assist motorists who have encountered problems with the Electronic Road Pricing or ERP payments. Motorists, whose CashCards or In-vehicle units (IU) are found to be faulty, will get a one-for-one replacement free. LTA will also waive the administrative fee for the ERP violation.

In addition, LTA and NETS have announced an arrangement for the integrated testing of NETS CashCard and the IU at LTA's authorised inspection centres from this Wednesday. This will provide motorists a convenient one-stop solution to resolve problems encountered with ERP payments.

Mr Seah Kian Peng (Marine Parade): Sir, I understand from a recent press release by MOT that there are about 250 to 300 such incidents per month. My supplementary question is whether MOT considers this to be an acceptable number and, secondly, how we can further reduce the inconvenience to the people who are affected by such system faults?

Mrs Lim Hwee Hua: Mr Speaker, Sir, allow me to put the problem in perspective. Currently, there are about nine million ERP transactions in a month. So, the 250 to 300 cases really represent a small percentage of 0.003% of the total transactions. But having said that, it is the intention of both LTA and NETS to reduce the inconvenience for motorists who have been affected by these ERP problems because of technical issues. With the integrated one-stop checks, motorists will not have to keep going down to the LTA and, therefore, avoid the inconvenience of having to make additional trips to get a waiver of the administrative fee.

Mr Seah Kian Peng: Sir, I agree that, statistically, this is not a very significant

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number, but for a first-class transport system that we are aspiring to, I think we should strive for zero defect. I hope the MOT will impose that as a KPI.

Mrs Lim Hwee Hua: Sir, I would say that it is impossible to achieve a zero-defect policy. But I would add at the same time that for the ERP system as a whole, LTA does have a standard, which is a system availability of 99.7%. I think that is a high enough standard for the system as a whole.