The official figure

The Institute of Service Excellence (ISES) at the Singapore Management University (SMU) just released the results of its annual customer satisfaction survey of the transport and logistics sector in Singapore. It was conducted between April and June of this year, and generally found improvements over last year's results. These include improvements in its scores for public bus transportation (up 5.3 points over a 100 point scale) and the MRT (up 3.7 points). 

As expected, nobody I know who take public bus and MRT transport as often as I do (which is 5 days a week commuting to and from work) can reconcile their experience with the results of this survey. In fact, there are probably more who I do not personally know (and thus cannot vouch for) who would express the same opinion. Just read the comments in response to the report in Today Online. None of these comments expressed agreement with the findings. Some questioned its survey methodology. Others didn't bother - it was just plain wrong, they said. Yet others threw scorn on ISES, saying that it has lost credibility. 

Let me say first that ISES, which is under SMU, has done this survey since 2007. It must be credible. Otherwise, it would have closed its doors. There is always the fine print - and point - in interpreting statistical figures. The news media are often at fault in giving the wrong impression. In this case, news headlines suggested that public transport service has improved overall ("Singaporeans are satisfied with public transport system" - Todayonline,  "Satisfaction over public transport has increased..." - CNA). And you know, in the age of the sound bite, that's all that anyone is interested in reading - the long suffering man in the street who will disagree, not knowing what exactly he disagrees with, and the smug corporate transport executives who will agree, again not knowing exactly what they agree with. So we are always back to square one.

Survey results are raw. Only when you begin to look closer at the results in specific contexts can you make any meaningful inferences and arrive at certain conclusions. Truth be told, the same set of survey results can be interpreted in any number of ways, depending on what you want to say, or hear. So the 'saying', or interpretation,  is important. And when you look closely at what the ISES researchers say, they agree that frequency and punctuality needs to improve further, something that everyone has been saying all along. For the man in the street, the improvement needs to be significantly more. For the transport executive, that's distilled to a number, no more nor less. And this is where they don't see eye to eye. As the ISES researchers have rightly pointed out, it is, after all, a matter of perception although this did not stop them from quantifying such an un-quantifiable attribute.

Up, up and away

It is said that there is no certainty in life except death and taxes. Well, in Singapore, you can add public transport fare increases. And that's because there is a formula that stipulates such adjustments EVERY year, no matter if the public transport operators provide good and efficient services. This includes an age-old bugbear, which is the timely arrival of buses and their frequencies. Just yesterday, a friend of mine complained of dreading travelling to work because only one bus service plies the route near where she works and she has had to board the second or even the third bus because the first/second one that comes along will simply be too packed to board.

And here, you have the Public Transport Council (PTC) deciding in favour of the transport operators, namely SBS Transit and SMRT, to increase fares across the board by 1%. You might think that 1% is not a whole lot compared to the 2.8% that was asked by the operators, but for any service which falls short frequently, 1% is a percent too much. Is it any coincidence that SMRT, the subway operator, just announced a massive increase in the number of trains that will be put into operation to address the problem of congestion? Why in the first place did the congestion come about? Some people were 'sleeping', right? Well, let's see. Don't count your chicks before they are hatched. Probably only in Singapore do you have a situation where a vendor is allowed to increase prices BEFORE any improvement can be seen and felt by its customers in its services. Yep, Singapore is really business friendly country. Customers? They are there to milk them dry. Commuters have no choice at all as they have to commute to work to earn a living.

But the operators would protest that oil prices have increased, which has eaten into their profits. Coupled with that the increase in their manpower cost, and moreover, there is the annual price adjustment formula (which always works out to an increase), all of which justify asking for the 2.8%. Cost pressures from oil prices? Come on, which business is not adversely affected by oil price increases? And when oil prices decreases, you don't hear from these same public transport operators.

Manpower cost? Every business has manpower cost issues. Apparently, SBSTransit's and SMRT's perennial solution is to charge its commuters higher fares. I wished that some independent party can audit these companies' operations to discover if there are not areas in which manpower cost can be lowered, or if there are not inefficiencies that are not being addressed. The certainly of increasing fares annually, and lack of real competition (mandated by the government, no less) provide no incentive for the operators to do anything about lowering manpower costs. To hedge their bets, they can just 'mark up' the fare increase requested for, have the PTC lower and approve it, and SBSTransit and SMRT can laugh all the way to the bank. Oh sure, they will say that they have improved one thing or another, but they would not have had to try hard enough. Why is it paying its CEO millions of dollars annually if manpower costs are so dire? To these public transport operators, I say, deal with it, and don't beg for more to pay your CEO even more every year.

The PTC claims that public transport fare prices have, on aggregate, decreased between 2008 and 2010 by 3.4%. And what do you know, services have gone from bad to worse within these same years. Sometimes I wonder if the authorities are so fixated on numbers that they miss this point - the real value or lack of it, to the commuting public, which makes it so difficult for long-suffering commuters to swallow a fare increase, however slight, or seemingly well justified. Perhaps its members who sit in judgement never take public transport often enough?

I truly look forward to the day when an increase in public transport fares will be accepted because commuters have seen the value that these operators have given them, and not the pain of the daily commute. Sadly, that day has yet to come. With things as they are, that day may very well never come. After all, I have been waiting all my life...

See also: 1 percent transport fare hike sparks debate online

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.

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!