How to Improve Our Public Transport

The shortcomings in our public transport is not an accident. It is a combination of official government policy (more people = greater passenger load = greater profits = justification to bring in more foreigners) and complacency on the part of executives of the transport companies.

Just what proportion of their (the transport company executives) time is spent on thinking about improving service quality? Seriously? For the most part, the system works smoothly. All they do is basically sit in their offices, shake leg and collect a large salary at the end of the month. It's only when something goes wrong like the recent MRT breakdowns that they need to 'wake up'.

The transport companies collect a vast amount of data from the daily swipes of the EZlink card. They should be able to mine it to determine the passenger load patterns through out the day and months of the year and use such data for capacity planning to make more efficient use of their existing resources to improve service quality.

Going through such usage data, they should be able to identify 'hot spots' where a significant number of passengers get on and where they get off. Specific feeder bus services can then be deployed to run a loop service during those times to cater to these passengers between these hotspots. This dynamic allocation of resources to when and where they are needed will improve customer service during peak usage times without the need to invest more in capital (buses/trains) and human resources (drivers).

So what are the companies doing with the EZlink data they are collecting? My guess is they are using it just to determine fare refunds. PSA had a software program developed to help them load and unload shipping containers more efficiently so as to improve throughput. The transport companies can do likewise with their operations. All the data they need is already available but is just lying around unused.

Improving our public transport isn't just a simple case of injecting additional capacity. The 500 buses is just PR and makes for good headlines like the recent 'Singaporeans First' for Primary 1 allocations. With 30,000 foreigners alone coming in each year, how long will the additional capacity of 500 buses last? Assuming 60 passengers per bus, it will be absorbed in just ONE year, two tops.

But with the public, through the government, being willing to fund their capital and operational expenses, there is just little incentive for the companies to do anything other than what passes for business as usual. Someone needs to light a fire under their asses.