Coordinating nothing

Where was the Coordinating Minister when you needed him? He was not to be found anywhere near the NE Line train stations. To be fair, he did blog about it, albeit from afar. But the real question is: as the Transport Minister, why did he allow SBS Transit (SBST) to put into place a new train on a Monday morning? Clearly, there was no risk assessment conducted, or if it was done, it was slipshod work. Any astute engineer or manager, or transport minister worth his salt will know that, as the saying goes, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. And it went horribly wrong on the first day of school and work after the weekend. 41,000 commuters were reportedly affected, yours truly being one of them. The risk would have been considerably reduced if the introduction of the new train was done on a Saturday morning or better still, a Sunday morning.

It would have turned out to be a big mistake if students, who have studied so hard for the last ten years, missed their national exam papers. As it was, students were left scrambling to get to their exam venues. According to reports, many managed to do so, though some only in the nick of time while others went to other exam centres, Any right thinking person with a sense of the risk involved in commuting would have delayed any change to the MRT line in this period. And the risks have proven to be quite significant over the last couple of years. Mr Khaw is the Coordinating Minister. He is the Transport Minister, and he has Mr Ng Chee Meng, Second Minister of Education in charge of Secondary Schools, working for him. Clearly, he has failed to join the dots. Mr Fixit nearly dropped his pants for all to see.

We expect more, Mr Coordinating Minister. Not just making appearances here and there and everywhere like a movie star or some celebrity. This just won't do. I hesitate to think of the ire of parents should their children have missed their exam papers yesterday morning because somebody did not do his job by coordinating well.

May the best taxi service win

Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan would like to evaluate upstarts GrabTaxi and Uber to ensure that there is a level playing field. I suppose that means that GrabTaxi and Uber (G&U) should not have an unfair advantage over the incumbent taxi companies. In my opinion, what it really means is that the government, through regulations, wants to up the costs of G&U. That, or it wants to banish, or at least suppress, this innovative transport solution. Once this is done, the taxi companies will deem the competition to be fair.

This is ridiculous. For as long as there has been taxi companies such as ComfortDelgro, SMRT, etc. operating their fleets of taxis, there has really been no real competition. The taxi prices are really collusive, dressed up as free-market competition, never mind that the hop-on fare differs from one taxi company to another. You really don't get to choose which company's taxi you hop onto in a taxi queue. You are expected to take the next one that comes. It is expected of you. Of course you can refuse the next taxi which, in your view, charges more, but that means that you are left to rue whether you should have passed it up because it seems to take forever for the next taxi to appear, and you are beginning to run late. It is an absolutely unsatisfactory state of affairs, to say the least. Of course you can call for a cab, but you have to pay for the service. The problem is, part of the booking fee go to the taxi company (I suppose for providing the calling service). The net effect is the increase in the cost of taking a taxi. Now what if you can get a taxi to come to you by using your phone? That's the value proposition of G&U. Hop-on fee starts at S$8 and the total cost you incur may come out to lower or higher than if you had taken a conventional cab. It doesn't matter. The important thing is, G&U will estimate the price of the trip and you can either go ahead with the booking or not. That's real competition for you, not the wayang competition that the authorities are so fond of dressing up as competition. You get to choose. Sounds familiar?

I say, let things be. If G&U get a bad reputation because of reports of mis-conduct, people will hear about it and it will spell the doom of their business. I don't think you really need the government to come in to play the referee. It will be a total waste of tax-payers' money. What existing taxi companies should do is engage G&U in real competition. Offer the value proposition that has made U&G so popular, or better them with something more innovative. Not hide behind Minister Khaw's apron in the name of fairness.

You say there is a mobile apps from ComfortDelgro taxis? When I last check, it wasn't available on my Windows Phone. Uber is and has thus acquired me as a customer.

Here's how to become a Uber driver in Singapore.

The Unseen Hand

Well, its probably unfair, and I am sure it is coincidental. Someone observed that once Ms Saw, the ex-CEO of SMRT, spoke (blogged in this instance), the train operations stop working. The competitors are not spared. Did Ms Saw have such capabilities in the first place? If she did, she would have swallowed up SBSTransit and merged it with SMRT during her tenure as SMRT CEO. So this talk is all just mischief, I hope.

Wake up your ideas

Our Transport Minister, Mr Lui Tuck Yew, appears to be a regular public transport commuter nowadays, especially when the train breaks down. In the most recent incident, Minister Lui took the trouble to be almost everywhere to ensure that people's lives are not too inconvenienced unnecessarily. He may be the Transport Minister, but it appears that he also runs the transport operations. He may as well be the CEO of SBSTransit. Which is more than we can say about the actual CEO. Well, its unfair for me to say that. A press conference was called towards the END of the day where the actual CEO, Mr Gan Juay Kiat, apologised for the breakdown.

By his actions of late, Mr Lui has set the bar to almost impossible heights for our transport operators' senior management. The head honchos of these transport operators would probably prefer that he kept a lower profile and said less. Heck they probably wished he never took their trains. But really, the only way they can have this wish fulfilled is for the transport operators to do their jobs in the first place. Roster for thorough maintenance of both the trains and the tracks. Have zero tolerance for failure so that no apologies become necessary and the rest of us can go about our lives doing what the government tells us to do: increasing our productivity. Above all, be paranoid. Always imagine that something will go wrong. Check everything. Check them again. No, check it a third time. Sure this will cost more, but as it is, breakdowns also cost the transport operators not only monetarily, but more so its reputation and trustworthiness. Well, you say these are really not important given the fact that the transport operators are monopolies. Whether you like them or not, you have to take their trains to work. So who gets busted if we cannot bust the commercial operators? The politicians, of course!

I hope the civil servants, especially the big shots in the LTA, realise that their behinds are being shield by Chief Lui. As they say in the army, they had better 'wake up their ideas' and not have their boss run around on their behalf all the time. No shame ahh? Well you say the boss wants to run around, so what can you do? Simple, make sure these major breakdowns and disruptions don't happen! As Andy Grove famously wrote, ONLY THE PARANOID SURVIVES.

Up no down

The transport companies have finally opened their corporate mouths. They want to increase their fares because of rising oil prices and manpower costs. Well, of course manpower costs have gone up. SMRT paid its CEO S$1.85m last year and ComfortDelgro CEO got more or less the same. Going by Wall Street's standards, that's a pittance. But then bench marking against those crooks in NY isn't all that great an idea anyway. In the context of this tiny island where your average Joe in the bus/train earns no more than $35,000 a year, and inflation galloping at 4-5%, S$1.8m a year is a princely sum. And she dares to asked for more? Even Oliver Twist will blush at the thought.

So what's new? Nothing, really. After blowing their trumpets about how they will increase the number of trips and frequency of their buses and trains, I, the man in the street from Mondays to Fridays, hasn't seen, much less felt, any improvements in bus/train frequencies at all. In fact rush hour intervals on the East-West line has gone up from 3 minutes to 4 minutes - I kid you not. And bus frequency? Sorry, I don't take them anymore. I am taking private buses. These buses cost more, but at least they serve me well. And that's really what commuters are looking for, really. If bus/train services provide noticeable and sustained improvements, I will not grudge a couple of more cents increase in fares. Its really when you are asked to pay more for the same lousy service that you get boiled up every time the issue is raised. The PTC is reportedly studying the proposal. Well, I hope the PTC takes their time and start taking the bus and train first before they make a decision, as a brave MP and the Transport Minister Lui has done. But just don't take it for a day, or a week. Make it a month. Then you begin to understand why hardworking people find it so very hard to go to work nowadays.

Horrific Transport

Where were you all these many years? An MP, from the ruling People's Action Party, Mr Lim Biow Chuan, has finally done the right thing, but after prodding from the just concluded GE 2011. He has actually gone down to the street, literally, to witness for himself residents' complaints about the poor bus service. The new MP for Mountbatten said he was "...'horrified' at the bus service standards in his ward..." (Yahoo News, 21 May) after an on-the-ground check of the bus service level in his ward. I leave you to read what he found out. We must give credit to Mr Lim for walking the talk. Taking that simple but important step to see for yourself your residents' complaints and not assuming that it is a lot of hot air blown by some disgruntled commuters is showing your sincerity in doing your job right. I wonder how often former Transport Minister Raymond Lim bothered to check things out himself, or did he just rely on a team of 'yes' men and women who 'sugar-coat' their assessments for his consumption. Maybe that is why he is the former Transport Minister.

But this problem is not particular to Mountbatten. And it is not new either. In fact, it is endemic to Singapore. I wrote as far back as 2007 my horrendous wait for a bus 27 in Tampines (yeah, that Constituency still helmed by Mr Mah Bow Tan), and pointed out that the problem of poor bus service goes back umpteen years. In all those years, nothing much has changed and with rising transport fares through the years, you get pretty genuinely disgruntled commuters. That is why transport fare increases has never been welcomed, even though it is only a few cents every time. People just cannot associate paying even a cent more for a service which never improves.

Hopefully, Mr Lim's horrific experience will lead to some permanent changes. But you know, I doubt if there will be change. I have become a Singapore public transport cynic after years of bad experience taking public transport. But lets give it a chance. Let's see if any permanent change can come out of this.

Hub and spoke

Well, finally somebody is talking sense and thinking out of the box. The Transport supremos in the government are now suggesting a 'hub-and-spoke' model for public bus services, in place of the 'cross-country' type of bus services which has been in place for all these many years. The hub is the MRT stations, the spokes are all the feeder services from the 2 bus companies. Bus services will travel shorter distances, which will minimise delays caused by unexpected road congestions, resulting in more timely and regular bus services. Generally, MRT train services run like clockwork, so this new model of public transport appears logical and may even work. I suppose the viability of this is new service model was just waiting for the rail network to become more comprehensive. But it could have been tried out earlier. Come April 2010, more stations on the Circle line will be opened.

But of course, there are people who are not certain that this will improve things. People fret about having to change multiple transport services getting to their destinations. This is a valid concern, given that people have suffered all these many years from irregular services from the bus companies. Hopefully, with shorter end-to-end trips, service will improve significantly and dispel the bad experience. We should try this out and tweak the system so that it becomes better over time. But of course, by going hub-and-spoke, the transport people should remember that there are exceptions, particularly for places that are not served adequately by the rail network. There are some places which will be served well by one model, but other places where a cross-country model could still be better. The frequency can be less for these cross-country routes, which will help to raise, if not improve the scheduled arrival times for these bus services. The other concern is that the train companies should ensure that their services are not so overcrowded that people need to wait for the next train service because the first one is too full. Then we'll all be back to square one.

Damned Slow

The standard of public transport services came under the radar on Thursday in Parliament. As usual, promises have been made and there is smug satisfaction that the public's perception of Public Transport Services in Singapore have improved, reportedly from 89.5% 2 years ago (i.e. 2008) to 93.8% this year. But as any good student of Statistics will tell you, these numbers on their own do no tell the whole story. I was thus amused when I read today's (Friday 12 March) edition of myPaper. This is a bilingual paper. On page 4, the English edition gave a positive account of the public transport services in Singapore, highlighting the many plans and promises that the LTA and Minister Raymond Lim made yesterday in Parliament regarding public transport services. One of the reasons for these is to wean people off the owning of private vehicles.

Yet, on the first page of the Chinese section of the same paper, we had reports of complaints by some commuters about long waits for buses (a commuter reported waiting 40 minutes in the evening for a bus), and bus bunching. When the long wait seems to be over, and the bus does arrive, it is so full that you can't even board it. So you have to wait another 30 minutes for the next another bus, if you haven't hopped onto a cab already, that is. This story is no fiction. For the last 2 to 3 months, I have encountered the same problem, buses coming infrequently during rush hour, that I have had to wait for a second bus because the first one that finally appeared was full. Those in a greater hurry just hailed for a cab. One wonders if the bus company is cahoots with the cab company.....oh yah, some bus companies (SMRT, SBSTransit) do own cab companies...

So for those who read English only, the transport situation is as rosy as can be. For those who read Chinese only, the transport situation is in a bad shape. For those who read both, well, we don't know what to think.

Of course, to be fair, this doesn't happen for all services. Some are regular, but it just takes one regularly erratic service to leave you with a bad taste, and, inspite of the high cost, to make a beeline to the motor vehicle showrooms.

Glassy eyes

Hmmm...took this picture off the internet (read: it is not my work) and found it resonating with what I go through everyday that I take the local subway to and from work. Food for thought.

Merry go round

I took my first ride on the Circle MRT Line on Saturday, 30th May 2009. It had been opened earlier to fare-paying customers on Tuesday, 26th May 2009. In fact, it had been opened a week earlier for a free preview by the public which, predictably, the public showed up in droves. I didn't like crowds, so I passed on the freebee.

It wasn't an awesome experience, though. With just 4 stations and a train half the length of their normal N-S and E-W ones, it felt more like an LRT than an MRT. But this is only stage 1, so it may be premature to pass judgement.

However, it opened up more options for me to get from my workplace home and vice versa. To this, I must pat the back of LRT/SMRT, and probably also the Transport Minister, Mr Raymond Lim, for giving me more reasons not to drive around the island. It didn't reduce my traveling time significantly though, perhaps shaved off 5 - 10 minutes. But that's not the fault of the train system. The constraint still lies with the unreliable Bus services. If something can be done about this.

One of the bonuses of this circle line is that it gives me convenient access via public transport to the Shunfu Mart, which houses several award winning food stalls - the Chao Guo Tiao stall (fried Kway Teow), and the Hakka food stall. Yummy. The problem is I've got to watch my weight ever more vigilantly now. For your info, the Mart is a short walk from the Marymount MRT station.

Old is better

Singapore is a place with a reputation for efficiency. So naturally, I took my complaint about the new ez-Link card to the person sitting in the MRT Control Station. I explained the problem and asked, rather rhetorically, if I could have back my old card. He just reached over his desk, retrieve a piece of paper and handed it to me. He said that I should contact the 1800 number on the paper and explain my card problem. That's very efficient indeed, paring away a complaint in less than it take to say, "I have a problem". You also begin to wonder why the Control Station has such a ready stock of these pre-printed slips of paper with instructions to call a 1800 number.

On second thoughts, these people were in charge of ensuring that the trains are running ok, and handle issues related to the train station. Don't ask a cat to produce milk. Hey! you got the wrong guy, right? I took the paper but lo and behold, the listed number to call was for lost or stolen cards. Now, my card is neither stolen nor lost... I gave up with officialese. I had to solve the problem myself. So much for Singapore's reputation for efficiency, and we are thinking big about growing our service economy...

I surmised that the reader might not be able to read my new ez-Link card because it was buried in all my other cards in the wallet. I re-arranged my cards so that the ez-Link card was on its own and nearest the outer back of the wallet. This way, it would be the first card that comes into contact with the signals of the reader. And it worked!

But I have a new irritant. The readers on buses take a longer time to read my card compared to the old one! Previously, it was really 'touch and go'. Now, with this new card, it was 'touch wait hear look hear and then go', taking me at least a second more than I previously took to get out of the bus. Now, you may think that 1 second isn't a long time, so what am I complaining about? But when you consider that when everyone else has to do the same, you are looking at a lot longer to process the queue out of and into the bus. That's not progress.

This new-fangled ez-link card? Well, the LTA can have it back and eat it for breakfast, for all I care. I want my old card back.

Old Card New Card

Since 9 January 2009, Singapore Bus and Train commuters are able to use the new CEPAS-compliant ez-link card on the subway train (MRT/LRT transportation network) and the bus services operated by SMRT and SBSTransit. And since that day, people have been queueing up to get the latest 'gadget' in a one-for-one exchange of their existing ez-link card. The public has up till 30 September to change their existing cards, after which, if I am not wrong, the existing card will no longer be valid.

And in typical Singapore style, long queues have formed to get this latest card. Given that 30 Sep 09 is the deadline, there is really a lot of time to do the changeover, so people really do not have to queue. But I found myself in the queue last week and got mine changed within 10 minutes. Call me kiasu, or whatever, but I have since regretted my haste. This new cards has been an irritant because the fare gates at the MRT stations just refuses to read the card unless I remove it from my wallet. I suspect that the reader might have problems deciphering the various cards in my wallet, as happened with the new NETS Cashcard I bought a couple of months ago. In the case of the Cashcard, I had to put it in my coin and key wallet. I don't shudder to think that I need to carry a third wallet to isolate the new ez-link card.

The odd thing is, the readers on the buses, whether those from SBSTransit or SMRT, have no problems whatsoever with this new card. I continue to successfully 'beep' the card while still lodged in my wallet, as I used to do with the old card. Sheesh. I say again - I now regret changing to the new card. It has no significant added benefit over the old card, at least for now, until some other establishments, such as retail shops, start accepting them from February onwards, as promised. Payment for ERP using this card will have to wait a bit longer as the in-vehicle-units need to upgraded also.

I hope Transitlink and LTA will resolve this problem - err...not by replacing the readers on the buses, mind you. Carrying three wallets will make my pants bulge - I just don't want to be mistaken for being permanently, err, on via***, you know. Right now, this new ez-link card is nothing but a pain in the ass, really.

See also:
SeP - LTA's new generation e-payment system
ez-Link card exchange exercise

Leg up to Public Transport

There's a new public transport web site and service available. Unlike SBSTransit's Iris NextBus for mobile devices, which is only available to Singtel and Starhub subscribers, this new service is available to anyone with a cellphone. With this new service, the public transport commuter just sends an SMS message to the number 77722 with the bus stop number. Within seconds, a list of arrival times for all buses at the bus stop will be sent to the cellphone. I tried it twice, and its fairly accurate. Maybe not up to the second accurate. It may be 1-2 minutes off, but in terms of sequence of arrival of the buses, it is spot on.

The only limitation with this service is that it only covers the academic town of Clementi - so students in Singapore Polytechnic, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, NUS, NTU and UniSIM are the main beneficiaries of the free service. It won't be free forever. Come next year (April, I think), each query will be charged. What the exact charge is, over and above the cost of the SMS, which must still be borne by the public transport commuter, is not known yet. iris Nextbus charges 5 cents per SMS request for postpaid customers and 10 cents for prepaid customers (Singtel prepaid accounts only). Since this is a service provided by LTA, it should cost less, hopefully. If it doesn't cost too much, it is going to be a winner, at least for those who use public transport in Clementi.

Oftentimes, I debate whether I want to take the bus on the other side of the road, or this side as several buses on different routes can take me to the same destination. What if I moved away from the bus stop and minutes later, find the bus that I was waiting for 'sailing' in? It happened before several times, much to my dismay. So with this Publictransport@sg system, there'd be no more second guessing. I can make an informed decision.

Public transport has just got a leg up.

Image: morgueFile.com. Author: Martin Cannings

It takes two

The price of oil has plummeted, in concert with the banks and investment houses going broke in the US and Europe. Singapore is now in a recession, yet the price of services in Singapore is still going up, or at least, not going down any time soon.

Electricity has gone up a whopping 20%. Transport costs, particularly taxi services, refuse to go down. A surcharge of 30 cents was slapped on taxi fares some time ago when the price of oil was going north at US$130/barrel. The price of oil is now US$70-$80 a barrel, and we learn that in spite of this, fuel oil is sold at a premium in Singapore for daa daa daa dee dee dee reasons...

Which of us common folks can understand ther pricing mechanism, anyway? The pump price for diesel is $1.53/litre now and the taxi company, in collusion, refuses to take away the surcharge, saying that it will be removed once the price of diesel falls to $1.19 - the December 07 level. So much for competition. Even cars running on gas pretend that they are on diesel.

What if the price of diesel falls to $1.20 and no lower? Then the surcharge will be a permanent charge, and you have the new model of increasing taxi prices. No need to agonise over prices increases in future since all you have to tell the PTC is that the increase is temporary. Well, how temporary is temporary? While commuters quibble over 2 cent increases, or even 10 cents increases that bus companies impose, we have the taxi companies getting away with 30 cent increases (well, ok, the taxi companies also run the public bus services and vice versa).

Well, there are two ways to skin a cat (my apologies to cat-lovers). Either we wait for the pump price of diesel to fall to that magical number, or we force the removal of the surcharge by with-holding our business. Commuters should just vote with their feet, literally, and take less taxis.

And it seem to be happening. Last Sunday, there was a long queue of taxis in front of my place. Usually, you'd have to wait at least 10 minutes to board one, if you are fortunate. Otherwise it would be 20 minutes. On that occasion, I spied a woman with a clipboard writing away while glancing at the taxi queue. No, I don't mean the people queueing for the taxi, I mean the taxi queueing for customers. The last time this happened was during the bad times, economically, that SARs brought. It was a breeze when you'd want to take a taxi then, because they are all lining up for you. When the good times return soon after, commuters were at the selective mercy of taxi drivers again, though not entirely due to the fault of the taxi companies.

I don't know what that woman's purpose was. Usually it is either to report back that there is not enough taxi's at a particular spot or the frequency is good/bad so that something can be done about it. This time around, there probably wasn't any concern for the commuter. It appears that the taxi drivers are more concerned. Well, it was only last Sunday. I would like to see if this happens again. If it does, then it would confirm that people's pockets are truly in sync with the reported recession that Singapore has slippped into.


Image source: morgueFile.com. Author: Cheryl Rankin