Nearly 40,000 bus tickets sold within hours under S'pore-Malaysia land VTL

Close to 40,000 bus tickets under the land vaccinated travel lane (VTL) arrangement between Singapore and Malaysia were sold hours after quotas for trips from Tuesday were fully reinstated this week.

One bus operator has sold all of its available tickets until March 21.

Singapore's Transtar Travel began selling additional land VTL tickets for trips between Tuesday and March 21 from 6pm on Wednesday. By about 8pm, around 40 per cent of the tickets had been snapped up, and they were sold out by midnight, said a spokesman for the company.

The firm is currently operating 24 VTL bus services between Woodlands and Larkin Sentral in Johor Baru daily, with 12 in each direction. This will be increased to a total of 48 services from Tuesday.

Each bus can have only up to 45 passengers.

Meanwhile, Malaysian bus operator Causeway Link started selling additional VTL tickets for trips between Tuesday and Feb 28 from 10am yesterday. All 7,560 tickets were sold out by 11.30am, said a spokesman for the company.

At 8pm, it started selling VTL tickets for next month.

The company currently operates 30 bus services between Queen Street in Singapore and Larkin Sentral daily. This will be reinstated to 60 services from Tuesday.

Transtar Travel and Causeway Link are currently the only two bus operators allowed to sell tickets under the VTL scheme, which allows for quarantine-free travel.

The release of additional land VTL tickets was met with overwhelming demand, with many would-be travellers taking to social media to voice their frustrations.

One traveller, who wanted to be known only as Vicky, already had a ticket to Johor Baru. He is travelling on Tuesday to visit his family, whom he has not seen in two years. But 28-year-old did not have a return ticket. He joined the virtual queue on Transtar Travel's website at 6pm on Wednesday, but gave up after waiting four hours.

The Singapore permanent resident, who works in the semiconductor sector, said the website's data showed there were more than 100,000 visitors at one point.

He got up at 7am yesterday to try to get a ticket from Causeway Link instead, and managed to snag one after sales started at 10am. "I am happy they restored the quota. I am happy for those who bought the tickets as they will get the chance to reunite with their families," he said.

When the land VTL scheme was launched on Nov 29 last year, up to 2,880 travellers could cross the Causeway in Woodlands using designated buses each day. This was later increased to 4,320 people.

But from Dec 22 to Jan 20, new ticket sales were suspended and the quota was halved for trips from Jan 21. This was to delay the spread of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry said on Wednesday that it restored the land VTL quota as imported Covid-19 cases are now unlikely to affect the trajectory of local infections. Border measures for land VTL travellers will be streamlined, with fewer tests needed.

Before borders were shut in March 2020, about 415,000 people travelled across the Causeway and the Tuas Second Link daily.

As at Wednesday, about 80,000 travellers from Malaysia had entered Singapore via the land VTL.

Meanwhile, as at Monday, a total of 171,583 travellers from Singapore had used both the land and air VTLs to enter Malaysia.