SBS Transit, SMRT earn a total of $1 million for improving bus reliability

SINGAPORE - Bus operators SBS Transit and SMRT have earned a combined total of more than $1 million in incentives for improving the reliability of their services.

Under a trial scheme that rewards and penalises operators for service reliability, SBS Transit was awarded $710,285.71 for improving 11 services, while SMRT received $345,714.29 for improvements made to seven.

A total of 22 bus services were selected for the trial Bus Service Reliability Framework (BSRF), which started in February last year. Four of the 22 services did not show any marked improvements or drops in reliability, hence no rewards or penalties were given.

"The incentives will help to offset the costs incurred by the public transport operators to hire the additional service controllers to support the BSRF," the Land Transport Authority said on Thursday.

The two-year BSRF trial is aimed at reducing bus waiting times.

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