Bus service reliability trial begins

SINGAPORE — Trials for the Bus Service Reliability Framework began today (Feb 3) with seven SMRT bus services.

The two-year pilot scheme assesses the regularity of a bus service using the concept of excess wait time (EWT) — the difference between actual and scheduled wait times.

One of the buses under the trial, Service 188, starts from Choa Chu Kang and ends at Harbourfront bus interchange. During off peak hours, the service leaves the interchange every 15 minutes. At a bus stop halfway through the route, the service arrived between 11 and 20 minutes apart.

Mr James Zheng, a commuter who takes bus service 188, said: “The bus usually comes around 20 minutes or so, and you have to wait sometimes if you miss one bus, (and) the next bus is 30 minutes later… Today the bus came quite on time.”

Commuter Nur Syazwani Safi’ee said: “The speed of the bus is not too fast, not too slow… The bus driver today was very patient, and (he) waited for old people to sit down then (he) drove the bus.”

Dr Park Byung-joon, head of urban transport management programme at SIM University’s School of Business, said: “So the first four months, I think both PTOs (public transport operators) will work out the kind of plan, how they are going to implement the strategy to improve the EWT.

“So in the first month or two, the public may not be able to see much difference, because it is more of learning the system. So they are developing their own strategy to improve their ETW performances.” CHANNEL NEWSASIA