During the recent budget debate, Transport Minister Raymond Lim told
parliament that the approach to centralised bus planning is to '
identify any gaps in connectivity and try to plug them'.
Some of these gaps include cutting back on complicated routes to ensure that the services run more efficiently.
What are some of the potential pitfalls that can be avoided, as details
of the centralised bus planning ' blueprint ' are being worked out?
Lin Jiamei finds out.
The idea is to avoid a radical ' big bang ' approach with major changes
to the bus system that will confuse and in turn put off many commuters.
Take Seoul for instance , a landmark reform of its public bus system
was carried out in 2004 when many major changes were introduced.
-- one of which was the change in bus routes and numbers, overnight.
Professor Kim Kwang Sik from Sungkyunkwan University was involved in the planning of the Seoul Bus Reform.
He admits that the situation was ' very bad ' within the first week of implementation.
"For instance the blue bus, it has three digits, 1-0-1, means from zone
1 to zone 0 and bus number 1. In my case, if I used bus 56, from 1 July
2004, overnight, it became 101, completely changed. So although we
advertised the changes in bus numbering and everything related to the
bus reform, about 6 months before, but still people did not give
attention. "
Adding to the complexity of the changes is the introduction of new
players to the market, which in the case of Singapore, could be seen as
early as next year.
But how will the potential new operators be able to compete with the existing operators?
Stephen Lucas is Chairman of the Australia's Bus Industry Confederation.
"Quite often smaller fleets and operators are able to deliver more
innovative solutions than large operators who really end up being a
quasi government operations. SBS for example is so large that it
mirrors in some ways the way we used to operate in Australia before our
public sector operators were privatised. How many is too many and how
many is not enough. There is not really an answer to that and it
depends on the design of the system and for the planners to think very
carefully what outcome they want out of this. "
--938Live