July 16, 2006
Save our buses, please
Direct bus routes are re-routed to avoid overlap with trains, but commuters say MRT isn't always faster
By Jeremy Au Yong
IT USED to take polytechnic student Poonam Singh, 20, just 45 minutes to get from Bendemeer to visit friends living in Clementi. But bus service 106, which she could board from practically her doorstep, was re-routed in 2003 when the North-East MRT Line opened.
Her trip now takes a full 20 minutes longer: She first has to take bus service 65 to Dhoby Ghaut before getting onto bus service 106 to complete her journey.
Her story is just one of the many that Singaporeans, who are sorely missing their direct bus routes, will tell.
Many bus services that had some degree of overlap with train lines have been either re-routed or removed completely. Since the launch of the first MRT line in 1987, operators have taken more than 80 bus services off the roads and changed the routes of countless others.
This cull is making travel times longer, commuters say.
The Department of Statistics, in its General Household Survey 2005, also found that the bus is the fastest mode of public transport to work, followed by the MRT and trips involving both.
But its data showed that the proportion of commuters who can take a direct bus to work dropped from 25 per cent in 2000 to 21.9 per cent last year, while the proportion of those who took either a train or a combination of the two rose from 22.5 per cent to 25.2 per cent.
The Sunday Times did its own tests last week, comparing travel times on six routes plied by existing direct and express buses, but which also had access to MRT services.
Using the same start and end points, six reporters took the direct buses, then repeated the journey at the same time the next day - during peak and off-peak hours - with the fastest alternative route possible. This meant taking only the train in some cases, or if needed, catching a feeder bus to the station first.
In all cases but one, the direct buses either triumphed or at least were comparable to their train counterpart, give or take a few minutes.
Only bus service 518 - ironically an express service from Pasir Ris to Orchard Road - lost out. But this was also an anomaly, in a sense, because a good 30 minutes - almost half the total journey time - was spent doing laps around Pasir Ris, Tampines and Bedok.
Of the six, buses were the clear winners in two instances, one of which was Express service 502. The results were mixed for service 190, which was faster in the afternoon but slower in the morning due to bad weather and a jam.
For all three, the routes mimicked those taken by cars. Train trips, however, involved having to do a switch at an interchange or taking a less direct route.
A common complaint of unhappy commuters: When direct bus routes are pulled or re-routed, travelling times get longer.
Enduring transfers also does not mean a cheaper ride, as The Sunday Times found out. On the six routes it tried out, the total fares on journeys involving transfers were as much as, if not more than, those of the direct buses.
Not to mention the inconvenience of hopping on and off one bus to the next, or having to walk to get to an MRT station.
Auditor Tay Hui Juan, 23, for example, can no longer take bus service 111 from her home in Hougang and has to catch a feeder bus to the Hougang MRT station.
The difficulties commuters are facing stem from an industry practice of 'rationalisation' which began when the first trains started running. What this meant was a continual consolidation by operators of the routes taken by buses and trains to minimise duplications between the two.
But since the first five bus services were yanked off the road in 1988 when the MRT line between Yio Chu Kang and Outram Park was completed, commuters have been asking transport operators to save their bus services.
At the heart of the plea is that buses, because of their more extensive network, are simply easier to get to. This on its own already cuts journey time. A public bus audit in 2002 showed that nearly no one walked more than 400m to a bus stop. MRT stations tend to be farther away.
Sales assistant Haslinda Abdul Gaffar, who takes the 190 service daily from her home in Bukit Panjang to Funan Centre where she works, makes this point: 'Service 190 stops right outside my block. It's a hassle to take the train. I'd have to walk and then take the bus or LRT to the train station.'
That said, commuters are not blind to the obvious strengths of train services. Working like clockwork, they are not subject to the vagaries of traffic conditions, which can lead to unexpected delays. Trains are also much bigger and can pack in about 1,400 people at any one time, compared to just 80 on a normal single-decked bus.
As well, when it comes to short and uncomplicated journeys, trains win hands down.
It is for this reason that engineer Tan Weijing, 32, who takes bus service 105 regularly from Jurong to Orchard Road, said: 'Trains are good. Let's have trains. But please have buses as well.'
SBS Transit and SMRT said that when reworking their bus services, they were mindful of commuters' concerns.
Said SBS Transit director of corporate communications Tammy Tan: 'Any change would be based on our philosophy to benefit the majority and minimise the number of those affected. We will try to ensure that the minority who are affected have alternatives, although some adjustments in travel pattern may be needed.'
She said the company was 'actively looking' at bringing on more direct or non-stop bus links such as its Express and Fast Forward services. Last year, it introduced more than 24 bus services.
Transport experts, on their part, say the loss of some direct bus services is sometimes inevitable.
Said Dr Paul Barter, assistant professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy: 'With limited resources, you cannot have unlimited services.'
He said he supported the Government's approach to public transport which focuses on a few main train trunk routes from which the other services feed off. This approach, though, would mean more time-consuming transfers, he conceded.
To compensate, Dr Barter proposed making transfers less painful by shortening the interval between bus service arrivals, putting up printed timetables or making transfer rides free.
Associate Professor K. Raguraman of the Centre for Transportation Research, a National University of Singapore think-tank, thinks some of the current problems are teething ones as Singapore works towards developing a more extensive train network.
He said: 'Singapore is modelling itself after cities like Tokyo where there is a very dense rail network and anywhere in the city you are just within walking distance to a station. We are in the transition stage right now. There will be winners and losers.'
[email protected][email protected]How the test was conducted
The ideal comparison would have been one of trips made on trains against the actual bus services that have since been terminated. But as this is no longer possible, The Sunday Times did the next best thing: using existing direct bus services.
Reporters selected six routes making sure that they covered as much of the island as possible and that each journey had a close substitute in the form of a direct train ride, or at worst, requiring only one feeder bus. Trips were made during morning rush-hour and also in the mid-afternoon lull.
The test works on the assumption that when any bus service is pulled, the status quo is otherwise unchanged ? no new bus or train routes are introduced to make up for it.
So all things being equal, the direct bus is faster or at least as fast as the existing alternatives in most cases.
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