Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Monitoring the occupancy of buses

At the bus stop this morning, a woman complained to me.

Woman - I have been waiting for 15 minutes for Bus 163 and it has not arrived. I saw many other passes pass by. Here is Bus 854. This is the fourth bus. Where is 163??

TKL - I am also taking 163. I observed, quite often, that it comes late and is crowded and full. I think the LTA should provide more buses for this service.

I wrote to the Straits Times a month ago and suggested that the LTA should monitor the occupancy of the buses for each service and published the results in a website. This will show the public about the occupancy rate, and help the LTA to identify the services that need more buses and those that can have less buses. Sadly, I do not see the LTA taking up this suggestion.

I had also written to a very senior person in the Ministry of Transport. He had forwarded my suggestion to the LTA. Nobody bothered to contact me about it.

I suspect that the LTA is not monitoring the occupancy for each service. I also suspect that they have some problem in calculating the occupancy rate, as some people use concession cards and do not tap out. If they ask me, I can give them my suggestion on how to deal with this matter. 

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