Ministry of Transport Iswaran is playing tricks on TKL
I take public transport and find the public transport system to be very good. 

I prefer to take public transport, rather than call a private hire car (i.e. Grab) or taxi. It is easy for me to walk to a bus stop and wait for a bus, which usually takes less than 10 minutes to appear. 

In comparison, I find it more stressful to call a Grab, because the driver may be unfamiliar with the pickup point, or usually appear several minutes later than promised by the app. 

The fare for Grab is much more expensive than public transport fare, especially in recent years.

Sometimes, my bus takes more than 10 minutes to arrive and may be packed. I usually accept this occasional fault, as I am quite tolerant. 

However, I get angry when I see many buses of other services passed by that are under occupied. In some cases, several buses of the same service passed by rather empty.

This is happening quite often. Something is clearly wrong about the scheduling of our buses. This appears to be a problem that has been happening for over a decade and nobody appears to care. 

There is another matter that bothered me. The latest financial report of the Land Transport Authority for 2021/22 showed that the fare collected for public transport was $757 million and the operating expenses was $2,187 million. The deficit was $1,429 million. 

This large deficit is borne by the taxpayers and has to be collected from ordinary people through other means, e.g. increase in GST. 

I am certain that the government can reduce by deficit by cutting down on wasteful operations, such as running many buses at low capacity, and streamlining the bus operations. 

We do not need over 300 bus services in Singapore, as we already have a wide network of MRT lines. We can follow the example in other cities, such as Hong Kong and Seoul, where the bus services are run as feeders to the train services. This would probably improve the public transport service, from the perspective of the commuters, and reduce operating costs significantly. 

Recently, I used the code phrase "Iswaran is playing a trick on TKL" to draw attention to my Facebook posts where I share my experience on public transport. Iswaran is our current transport minister.

Many of my posts with this code phrase drew over 30,000 views. Some drew more than 100,000 views. 

There appears to be a large team of sycophants, civil servants and Iswaran fans who monitor my Facebook page for the word "Iswaran" and share these posts to their wide circles.

Several people criticized me (and some attacked me personally) for putting the blame on the minister and for bringing up petty issues of occasional lapses in public transport.

I do not consider an annual deficit of $1.4 billion to be a petty issue. I also think that it is the duty of the minister to recognize the problem of wasteful operations and take steps to address this issue. 

I venture a guess that we can cut down operating cost by perhaps $500 million a year, without reducing the standard of service of our public transport system.

This problem existed for many years, way before Iswaran became the transport minister. 

However, the previous transport ministers, namely Lui Tuck Yew, Khaw Boon Wan and Ong Ye Kung, appeared in the media quite often to address the issues of public transport. Although I may not agree with their approaches in some cases, I appreciate that the issues are being recognized. It gave me the opportunity to give my feedback on some of these issues.

Iswaran appears to be rather silent on this matter. I hardly read about him address the key issues of public transport, especially the large deficit that is being incurred annually. 

I think that a highly paid minister has the responsibility to reduce the large deficit and improve the public transport service. He does not need to attend to these matters personally, but he does have a large army of civil servants who can be directed to address them. 

Tan Kin Lian 

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