End of the road for two on-demand bus services

Two on-demand bus services will close shop here as questions swirl about the viability of such services in Singapore.

After four years of operation, on-demand bus service Beeline, which lets commuters pre-book rides on express routes operated by private bus operators, will have its last day of service on Dec 31 and cease operation on Jan 1 next year.

Commuters can continue to book a ride on Beeline until the last day of service, after which its iOS, Android and mobile Web apps will stop working.

Beeline said that it is ending its service to develop products and services "that can deliver benefits and convenience to more citizens".

Individual operators will work with affected commuters to process refunds for unused passes and tickets, which could take up to 30 days, depending on bank processes. Some of Beeline's shuttle bus partners include SMRT-owned Strides, Woodlands Transport and Yeo's Brother.

Beeline was jointly launched by the then Infocomm Development Authority and Land Transport Authority (LTA) in August 2015. They had described Beeline as an "experiment" to explore how transport networks could be made "more adaptive".

Separately, Grab-owned shuttle bus service GrabShuttle, which is powered by Beeline's open source code, also said it will shutter on Jan 1 next year.

Grab said that its decision to end the service was separate from Beeline's announcement. "With this decision, we will direct our resources into further improving our core transport services to better serve our customers," a Grab spokesman said.

Commuters can book rides on GrabShuttle until Dec 31, and all unused ride passes and credits will be refunded to users' credit cards. GrabShuttle for School, a service aimed at schoolchildren, will also close, as will GrabShuttle Plus, a stop-to-stop service with non-fixed routes. GrabCoach, which operates coaches for larger groups, will continue to run.

The closures come as LTA shelved plans to offer on-demand public buses due to the high cost of technology involved.

Financial viability was always a challenge for on-demand bus services, said transport economist Walter Theseira, as similar services overseas require public subsidy or are restricted to niche operations.

"The problem has always been that demand needs to fall in between light and heavy. Too light and running a half-empty bus is less efficient than running a few cars. Too heavy and it's better to just direct them to scheduled public transport," he said.

The failure of the on-demand bus service concept, Associate Professor Theseira said, could suggest public transport gaps in Singapore are either not that large or can't be solved without subsidy.

Assistant Professor Raymond Ong, from the National University of Singapore's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said a highly subsidised public bus operation "makes a difference" to operators. Such bus operators could also face more challenges in future as the MRT network gets more connected and prices remain affordable, he added.