Ministry of Transport Express buses
The bus journey can take up to two hours for a long journey from home to work. The long traveling time discourages people from traveling by bus. If they travel by MRT, the traveling time may be shortened, but there is overload in our trains, especially during the peak hours.

When the MRT trains break down, it can be chaotic.

I suggest that express buses be introduced to connect our towns. This new structure will work as follows:

a) The express bus services to connect different towns.
b) These buses will run on expressways and will only make one or two stops at the towns in between.
c) Within each town, the commuter will take the feeder services.
d) During the peak hours, a separate lane can be reserved for buses along our expressways.

By using express buses, the traveling time could be reduced by up to 50%. Here are some examples of the traveling time at 9 am on Monday (obtained from Google Maps

a) Jurong West to Ang Mo Kio - 80 mins by normal bus, 40 mins by express bus
b) Tampines to Vivocity - 80 mins by normal bus, 30 mins by express bus

If we introduce a network of express bus services, we can discontinue most of the existing  350  bus service. We need about 60 express bus services to interconnect all of the 30 towns.  We will need about 100 feeder buses to serve the 50 towns.

It will be easier to manage the 160 express and feeder services, compared to the existing 350 normal bus services. The new structure should reduce the traveling time for most bus commuters by about 30% (allowing for transfers from feeder to express buses and back to feeder buses).

There is another advantage of using a better network of buses. In case of a MRT train breakdown, it is easier to organize the backup buses to take the commuters.

If we have a more reliable network, more people may find it acceptable to use public transport rather than buy a private car. This will help to achive the goal of being a car-lite city.


Tan Kin Lian



 

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