Deputy Director, Media Relations
Land Transport Authority
WE REFER to “Wheelchair friendly — but sorry, you can’t board” (Oct 2),“Why the Confusion Now?” (Oct 3) and “SBS should have accessed routes first” (Oct 3), and would like to clarify some areas of the report concerning the Wheelchair Accessible Bus (WAB) roll out. The work to ensure that the 4,500 bus stops in Singapore are wheelchair accessible is progressing on schedule with the aim to achieve island-wide coverage for WAB by 2010. SBS Transit (SBST) is also progressively rolling out WAB services as quickly as possible so that all public buses are wheelchair accessible by 2020. In the meantime, we need to remind wheelchair-bound commuters that not all routes are accessible until the infrastructure works are fully completed. For this reason, the operator SBST uses decals to indicate services which are ready to ferry wheelchair-bound passengers. On the use of WAB decals on buses not running on WAB routes, SBST has taken action to remove them to avoid further confusion. We apologise for the inconvenience caused to those affected. We have had several dialogues with the Society for the Physically Disabled and the Handicaps Welfare Association before the introduction of the WAB services to serve the needs of wheelchair-bound commuters and are open to their suggestion to further refine WAB implementation. We will consider these refinements and others that would make the transport system more accessible, not only to wheelchair-bound commuters, but also commuters with diverse needs.