What a relief over bus route rationalisation!

It seems the newspaper articles over the bus route rationalisation does not project the correct picture as I received a note.

The bus routes that are reviewed are only those travelling to the CBD and not bus services such as 151, 168 as the route is well utilised for a majority part of the journey.

Phew!

Bus service rationalisation - Part 2

In the earlier post over bus rationalisation, I made no mention the long haul routes that are more than 20km.

To the general public, it means the bus fare stage is more than 26.0 with each fare stage denoting about 800m.

Ironically SMRT Sv 858 has been lengthened on the same time the announcement of 'no more long distance bus service' allowed to be introduced.

SBS's long haul routes: 2, 5, 7, 10, 10e, 12, 13, 14, 14e, 21, 24, 27, 28, 30, 30e, 31, 32, 33, 36, 39, 43, 45, 48, 51, 52, 53, 57, 59, 66, 70, 74, 74e, 80, 88, 89, 89e, 93, 97, 97e, 100, 105, 132, 143, 147, 151, 151e, 154, 156, 157, 161, 165, 166, 168, 170, 174, 174e, 175, 182, 196, 197, 502, 506 & 518.

SMRT's long haul routes: 61, 67, 75, 167, 169, 171, 176, 178, 187, 190, 851, 852, 853 (Weekend route), 854, 854E, 855, 857, 858, 960, 961, 963, 963E, 963R, 965, 966, 969, 970, 980 & 985.

Denotes bus routes that were allowed to be introduced in the recent decade.
Denotes bus routes that were introduced during the MRT rationalisation in 1989 - 1994 & 1996 (Woodlands Extn).
Denotes bus routes that were rationalised by the MRT and had its distance lengthened.
Denotes bus routes that have been kept relatively intact before the MRT was introduced in 1987 or introduced in the 1990s.
(*Take note some services could have been amended due to New Town rationalisation or other factors.)

Long haul bus services were created at any time.

NTUC Fairprice - ESSO petrol vouncher

There's a current promo by NTUC Fairprice & Esso to NTUC Fairprice customers. By spending $30 at the former, customers would receive a $2 discount coupon for them to be used when pumping $50 worth of petrol. It works out to be 4% petrol discount (6% if one uses the Fairprice Plus card).

It's quite ironic when the govt is encouraging Singaporeans to take public transport or at least 'park n ride'.

NTU island run 2010 safety hazards

As I'm typing out this post, the NTU island run 2010 should have just completed. To those who participated in the 218km run, good job!

I've noticed how NTU has taken steps to ensure safety for the whole run. But there were incidents of near accidents by the AETOS motorbikes.

I'm not going to blame the AETOS officer because they're doing their job to ensure the runners running along the pavement do not get too close to any vehicles on the left lane. However the SMRT Sv 961 bus I was on almost knocked the m'bike because the auxiliary police officer did not give any space provision for the bus to filter out by positioning himself right in front of the bus to signal the bus driver to filter out.

The public bus is heavy and it would not be able to brake like a sedan car. Neither could the bus driver do heavy braking to prevent standing passengers from falling down. They do need space as due to their length, they would require the 3rd lane spacing in order to filter out smoothly.

Sometimes when the auxiliary police officers wants to do traffic control, do keep in mind their own safety and giving enough space for vehicles to filter out.

Bus service rationalisation

It's quite shocking for the recent announcement that LTA is looking into splitting up long haul bus routes simply because the whole route is below the 20km mark.

For one thing, I believe 35 - 40% of SBS's & 40% - 50% of SMRT's trunk services instead of the claimed 10% are beyond the 20km mark. Simply because they ply on long roads such as Thomson Rd/ Upp Thomson Rd, PIE, BKE, ECP, Pasir Panjang Rd, Bt Timah Rd/ Upp Bt Timah Rd corridors.

Furthermore some fast bus journey could easily clock the mileage too. I'll cite 2 examples: Onboard SBS Sv 30 & SBS Sv 168.

Sv 30: From Joo Chiat Cplx to HarbourFront. Traveling distance is roughly 12.5km and it takes 28 - 35 mins to complete. If it's via the EWL & NEL (MRT), it would take 30 mins (Incl 5 mins walking time at Outram Park and giving the in between waiting time at 3 mins). Clearly the MRT is nowhere faster than this semi express service that plies ECP.

Sv 168: From Woodlands Int to Tampines Ave 10/ IKEA. Travelling distance is roughly 22km and it takes 40 mins to complete. No prizes given to guess the time to take the MRT to Tampines and transfer to Sv 27 or 168 at Tampines MRT station.

Another flaw in this issue is the minister did not mention could our resources cope. The new integrated public transport hubs that LTA has built so far is barely enough for the current bus services, needless to say the ability to add more bus services should bus services be split up. Another issue is, is she now saying the people in wheelchair (PIWs) are also required to make multiple transfer to get to their destination?

The upcoming Serangoon Bus Int that would be completed in Q1 2011 would only have 15 bus parking bay. Clearly it's not even enough.

So the question come, where are the buses going to be able to terminate and let the bus driver has his or her decent break which is not occurring especially at the new Boon Lay Interchange? So are we going to rebuild roadside bus terminals which we have cleared for bus interchanges in the 1980s and 1990s to resolve this problem?

Such problems lingering are bigger than the benefits through through fare system.

It seems we're taking 3 steps forward, the govt is taking 4 steps backward. Hopefully more consideration is taken before it's executed.