Transport crawl

The transportation powers that be changed the method of charging for public transportation from 3rd July 2010. They named it "Distance Fares". The previous method of charging for travel, which I suppose we should refer to it as 'Non-distance Fares', has been in place since day one, or at least when the MRT started running together with the bus services. Actually nobody has complained about the old way of charging for travel. But many people complained when the fares were revised, almost every year. And they complained about the upward fare revisions because they do no perceive any improvement in value they get for more of their money. Buses (and sometime trains) do not run on time, causing many to spend more time than necessary on the roads. Buses AND trains are crowded during rush hour, with many only able to board the second (or even the third) bus/train that comes along. So there is a lot that need improvements. But we hear the same complaints year in and year out, showing that either we are people difficult to please, or there is something really wrong with the way transportation is being organised or run within the transportation providers' organisations. I think it is the latter.

Why is that? For example, I travel along the Clementi area almost everyday, and it has been my experience that SMRT Service 184 (and in fact most of the buses run by SMRT) are pretty regular. SBS Transit's buses almost always manage to irritate me and are a constant source of ranting to my longsuffering friends. I have always felt that SBS Transit should relook at its people and it scheduling, to provide more consistency to its bus services, but alas, I have waited years and years and nothing has changed, except the bus and train fares.

So you can forgive me if I am cynical about the latest Distance Fares. Isn't it just another way of increasing the fares of public transport? It is said that some commuters (some 34%) will see their transport cost increase and 63% a decrease, and the balance 3%, I suppose, status quo. But this itself is unfair. If I belong to the 34%, I will remain in that 34% until and unless I change jobs or house. So the net effect is that 34% of us are subsidizing 63% of the others in the long run. I don't see in this anything equitable and to be happy about. Neither party gets a better bus or train to ride in.

But having said this, my sense is that the 30, 40 cents increase/decrease is not the real issue. The real issues are the service standards, the predictability and the availability of services that is uppermost in commuters' minds when they set out everyday to work, or try to get home in time to join the family for dinner in the evenings. I know of some people who leave work late in order to avoid the crush of people, but alas, it appears that everyone is doing the same thing. That is why trains are standing room only even as late as 10pm.

This tweaking that is going on and continues to go on isn't bold and innovative enough. What now is willing to step up to the plate to really improve public transport service?

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.

Seeing double

Something interesting happened this morning. And yes, it has to do with Dover Bus Stop (just below the Dover MRT station). I spied a 74 coming down the road and rushed down to the bus stop so that I could catch it. But as I reached the bus' front entrance, the signboard read "147". I was stunned. My eyes cannot be failing me at this time, at my age, and at this early hour in the morning? I walked a few steps to check the bus number displayed panel on its fromt panel. Lo and behold, it read "74"! Thank God my eyes are ok and I am still sane.

Now why did this happen? Did SBS Transit find that it was running out of Service 74 buses and therefore, at the last minute, deployed a 147, but in the haste, forgot to switch one of its display panels to 74? This is probably the best explanation. Does this mean that SBS Transit has taken my rant to heart and shown that it is serious about keeping its promises about not being late? If it is, then credit goes to this transport company for being responsive. I would like to think that it is my rant that improved matters, but whoever and whatever the reason, I am happy with Service 74's service this morning.

Well done, SBS Transit. May all my mornings be like this, minus the bus number confusion.

Trashy promises

Well, as expected, SBS Transit has NOT been able to keep to its commitment of its widely reported 10-minute schedule effective August 2009. I had hoped it would be later rather than earlier. Today, I arrived at the bus stop just below the Dover MRT station at 8.15am. As I expected, the Service 74 bus had just arrived and I missed it. That's ok. I remembered what I blog about it yesterday (Fast Commitment) and decided to test out the promise - schedule-wise. This is, after all, the peak hour of the day. So I SMS'd the bus arrival service and was informed that the next Service 74 will arrive in 10 minutes. That was to be also expected. That was the plan. Well and good.

But I ended up waiting 25 minutes for the next Service 74 bus to arrive. This isn't a good start for the public transport company's commitment to better service. Like I said, it is the doing that proves the promise, and sadly, SBS Transit cannot do what it promises, and so soon at that. And this is not the first time either. In fact, it stretches way way back from when I was a student taking the bus to school. I blogged about this before.

One day, my classmate arrived late for lessons in the morning, and upon enquiry, said that the bus was late. The whole class roared! The teacher ticked him off, implying that the bus cannot be late, that the student is. I thought my teacher made sense. If you want to be punctual, be early, even at the expense of doing nothing when you arrive early. But over the years, I think my classmate, who today is a lawyer, was right. Its the bloody bus, stupid. And so I ended up being late for work today. Fortunately for me, I didn't have to walk into my boss' room to announce my arrival, but it does prick the conscience that I owe my employers so many minutes of loss time (multiply that by the same number of people at the bus stop waiting for the same service this morning and you've got major national productivity issue here). But I comfort myself to know that it is not I but the bus that was late.

Well, so much for SBS Transit's promises. You can throw their commitments into the next long-kang you come across. If it is urgent, you can flush it down the toilet bowl the next time you visit the loo.

But of course, SBS Transit will come out saying that it is the traffic jam though they can't blame the weather. It was sunny and clear this morning. Traffic jam? It really won't hold water because the number of stops between the Dover Bus Interchange and the Dover Bus Stop can be counted on the palm of one's hands. They will insist that the jam is the other direction, resulting in shortage of buses. If what they announced over the weekend is true, they'd be slapping themselves on the cheeks. So what went wrong? My guess is - it is the bus captain - the weakest link in the grand scheme of things. And the shocker is that SBS Transit doesn't seem to realise this. They keep buying new buses, tweeking the satellite links, thereby building up excuses for the next fare hike. The window of 10-minutes is very tight, so bus-captains must be ever so sensitive to the passing minutes, if not seconds, when they board their buses, start the engines and leave on their journeys.

Sadly, this is one thing that does not work, and continues not to work, in Singapore. Nevertheless, in this August month,

Majullah Singapore!

We keep on hoping, even after 36 years!

Fast commitment

SBS Transit, the local public transport company that runs most of the country's bus services throughout the island nation, and SMRT, which runs a smaller fleet of buses, have committed to get its buses to set out from its interchanges every 10 minutes or less during peak hours. This is an improvement, so it says, on the 13 to 15 minute interval currently in place. Yeah, sure. Show me first before I go ga-ga over the proposed improvements. No use just saying it, doing it is the proof of the pudding, as the saying goes.

Why am I sceptical? Well, I have been taking public transport all my life, and I have always said, even today, that SBS Transit, in particular, has not got its act together schedule and punctuality-wise. No matter what has been done - bus-lanes, satellite tracking, automated ticketing, you name it, has never solved the gripes of most commuters - bus' arrival intervals. Mr Charles Chong, when speaking to some new immigrants in his Pasir-Punggol Constituency in June this year, remarked that they are thankful that buses come in under 30 minutes, unlike (spoilt?) Singaporeans, who complain even about a 15 minute delay. Well, Mr Chong probably doesn't take public transport. Otherwise he would know that a 30 minute interval means that the arriving bus will be so crowded already that few can board it - making the effective waiting time 1 hour - if the bus company has its way.

Yes, a couple of new buses will help, but ultimately, the promise is only as good as the ability of its 'bus captains' to keep to their schedule. A longer than usual toilet break can throw the most finely-tuned schedule into disarray. Has SBS Transit and SMRT scheduled some spare 'bus captains' instead of just increasing the fleet size? Until it realizes that people are the weakest link in the whole scheduling thing will true change for the better come about. And it doesn't need investments in more new buses or satellite links. Why make people pay for things that do not solve the problem?

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.

Taxi dole

Whoever (excepting young kids and very old senile seniors) doesn't know that we are going through a recession must have had his/her head stuck in the proverbial desert sand. Jobs have been lost, people by the thousands are showing at at career and recruitment fairs, hoping to secure that 800 or so jobs on offer, probably in industries or businesses they are unfamiliar with. Choice isn't an operational word anymore, at least for breadwinners who need to feed the family.

So I have heard and the press has reported that taxi drivers are also suffering from reduced businesses. The logic is that more people are taking public transport to save money, even as salaries are cut and job security has become the uppermost concern on their minds. So taxis are finding it harder to get passengers. That's how the argument goes.

Well, pardon me if I disagree. Taxi business hasn't really gone down at all, judging from my experience over the last month or so. You see, I always take a cab on Sundays, and for the last few weeks, I have also had to take taxis at various locations around the island during weekdays, such as Clementi and Sims Avenue (near Geylang) - places, which even if you have lived 6 months in Singapore, you would agree has high human traffic almost the entire day.

In all the instances when I wanted to catch a cab home, I have had to wait for no less than 10 minutes for one. Many whiz past with passengers. In fact the other evening, I got fed-up waiting for a cab that I took a bus home. Yeah, it is that bad.

Are Taxi drivers suffering from poorer business? After all, the Chinese New Year has come and gone. So where are the taxis? Lining up at government offices collecting dole money? I have seen how bad business can be for taxi drivers, particularly back in 2003. This recession doesn't look anything like 2003 - it looks very much like business as usual.

Fair revision?

The Great Singapore Transport Fare Sales!
Up to 4.6% Fare Reduction
Hurry, limited time only*
Everywhere must go

Well, the transport fare revision is finally out, and it is going to kick in in April 2009. But it is good only for one year, up till 30April 2010. How typical of the PTC and the public transport companies to set a time cap. This fare revision almost looks like a great transport fare sale. The smart copy writer who came up with the travel ad "The world is on sale, everywhere must go" could have anticipated this Great Singapore Transport Fare Sales.

We are used to Robinson's sales, and Metro (no, not the transport type in this case) sales, etc., but an SBSTransit / SMRT sales is on for a year? So should I rush to take more bus and train rides, just so that I enjoy the sales discounts, no matter that I really don't need to get from point x to point y, just like what many people do when retailers put up sales promotions and people just buy up the discounted products when they really don't need the products on sales?

And please don't tell me the public transport companies are sacrificing $xx million here and there as if they are doing anybody a favour. After more than 30 years in the public transport business, they still haven't really gotten their act together. Otherwise why do you think that people continue to be willing to pay an arm and a leg for private transport?

* promotion ends 30 April 2010