One of the changes is the introduction of a single fare when transfers are involved. This should lead to lower fares for passengers who have to make transfers.

However, this would lead to a loss of revenue. This loss can result in (i) reduction in profit for transport operators (or even resulting in a loss), (ii) higher fares for passengers who do not make transfers, (iii) increase in the cost of concessionary fares or (iv) improvement in efficiencies in transport operation. On the face of it, all four options do not look very promising.

There is another option that the Government can consider. Currently, full-fare paying passengers are paying more than they should. This is because besides paying 'market rate' for their fares, they are also paying part of the fares for those on concessionary fares.

The people who take public transport are generally less well off than those who travel by cars or taxis. These people should not be made to pay for the concessions extended to those on concessionary fares. These are the people that the Government has been trying to help. This burden can be removed by the Government subsidising the cost of transport for those on concessionary fares.

Another change is increasing the proportion of services having a certain frequency during peak hours. This is a very gross way of measuring service quality. It is also a very difficult figure to optimise. Set it too high and the cost of operations goes up; it may even end up with so many buses on the roads that the capacity of the bus bays is exceeded. Set it too low and commuters will complain of long waiting times.

How frequent should buses run? It all depends. Too frequent and costs go up. Not frequent enough and commuters wait too long.

Bus frequencies must be aligned with the demand for the service. The only way to measure this is to do a detailed study of the actual travel experience of commuters.

As suggested by another letter to the forum, we can only obtain this information by analysing the boarding and alighting information captured by the ez-link system. A large amount of data is involved, and the analysis will be difficult due to the millions of passenger trips made but this is an analysis that must be done in order to match bus frequencies with demand.

Analysing this information can also allow the LTA to determine whether bunching of buses (of the same service) is due to adverse traffic conditions or whether drivers have been speeding. Sometimes, drivers would drive extremely slowly when they are near the interchange. I believe that this is because they have been speeding during the earlier part of the journey and are waiting it out on the road so they do not arrive too early at the interchange. The effect of two buses bunching together is equal to halving the frequency of the service.

Singapore is attempting to go green. Towards that end, perhaps public transport should be subsidised instead of taxed (example of taxes that can be removed are diesel tax, road tax, GST, etc.)

If a higher proportion of people take public transport instead of driving, the savings from less petrol usage and road infrastructure costs may even exceed the subsidies.

Whenever the cost of public transportation is brought up, people would say that the public transport operators have to look after their bottom line. Perhaps a radical change is required here.

Instead of public-listed companies, perhaps the institutions that run public transport can be institutions that are funded by bonds paying a fixed interest rate, or like IPCs.

A final point is the fines imposed by the PTC when the operators do not meet certain standards. Any fine paid eventually gets passed on to the commuter (even if both the PTC and operators say otherwise).

Tony Lee Chye Seng