Mountbatten MP 'horrified' at bus service standards

Interestingly, despite all the negative feedbacks on our public transport,
according to a annual survey commissioned by LTA, more than nine in 10 or 92.2% of over 3,100 respondents surveyed were satisfied with the overall public transport services.
In the survey, for MRT, it was reported that commuters ranked safety/security, travel time, station accessibility as the top three most important service attributes. Waiting time & comfort (congestion?) were not among them.

This survey was conducted by SIM.
Coincidentally, Gerard Ee, who is the Chairman of PTC (Public Transport Council), is also the Chair of SIM Governing Council.

It is only 3 bus services and you already horrified. When you look into the whole transport network I think you may faint.

Last night I boarded service 27 at tampines MRT heading toward Hougang, it was about 9:30pm and the first bus was so packed that about 10+ commuters has to wait for the next. When the next arrived about 5 min later, it was also packed, though I was nearing 50 in age, fortunately was still fit, I have almost to push and rush to have a chance to get in. Still not all commuters has boarded. Imagine if I have not insist to rush to front, I will have to wait for the 3rd bus!

Can you imagine if there is a old person trying to get on board? So it is not about freqency only. The operators has not the time to monitor the change of commuter patterns with the large influx of foreigners that has been increasing over the time. So knowing the problem is just the beginning and before you start to point fingers, it is better to know the root of the cause.

So what have LTA been doing in the past? They have done their own audit and come up with good rating on the bus services. And now the truth is out. Someone is sleeping.

The ROOT of our current problem is allowing our public transport companies to be privatized and worse still, allowing them to go listed.
Public transport companies SHOULD NOT be allowed to be listed!
You do not need a president scholar to tell you that this obviously creates a CONFLICT OF INTERESTS!
As a listed company, their main objective is to increase profits so as to maximise shareholders' return for its shareholders. However, as a public transport company, the main objective should be to provide affordable transport service to the public and put public interests as top priority instead of your shareholders.
So how to increase profits? Very simple. Increase fares and try to squeeze as many people as possible into our MRT and buses, resulting us being squeezed like sardines every freaking day.
Please think about it, do you think they will want to solve the crowding issue by increasing frequencies of the transport and improving infrastructure which eats into their profits which affects their year end performance and in turn affects the share price of the company. The CEO would be sacked in no time if profits keep reducing and share price keeps dropping. That's why the only thing they can do now is to hire more staff to direct and force more commuters into the already fully packed MRT carriages. Does anyone honestly think this should be happening instead?
In addition, PLEASE can anyone enlighten and explain to me why a public transport company like SMRT needs to earn over $100 OVER MILLIONS every single year??? I humbly request our MPs to touch your heart and ask yourselves, should a public transport company be earning that gross amount of profits at the expenses of the public commuters? What is there even a need to keep increasing our fares when they have been earning this kind of money every year? Does rising oil prices justify the increase? Then why when oil price drops your fare don't drop? I also seriously don't reckon that the increased in costs due to rising oil prices will cause the companies to be making loss if the fares are not increased. You have a buffer of 100 OVER MILLIONS of PROFITS! Are the companies treating Singaporeeans like fools?
I sincerely and strongly urge the government to stop this kind of ridiculous situation by buying back the public transport company and retake the management control of the public transport once again. I do not believe in the reason of "increased efficiency" given to allow privatisation of transport companies. By saying that do you mean our civil servants are not capable enough to maintain an efficient system? This is an insult to our civil servants and I believe there are many of them who can handle it. Moreover, we would be able to save a lot of costs on the dividends given to shareholders and directors' fees which can be better utilised and benefit the commuters.
Our current transport system needs a radical TRANSFORMATION.
Now the question is: IS our government dare to make the CHANGE?

good job , now dont just give yourself a pat on your back & then relax. plse do follow ups. esp the quality of the service in terms of the bus drivers who keep saying "wo pu cher tao" when we ask if the particular service is going to a certain place.
i swear i've been told this,and seen it done to other passengers as well.
.... and then the driver just points to the back asking me to seek help from other passengers !!
wow, if we sgporeans ever say "i dont know" in our jobs, sure get fired !
the other day in bus 66 a tourist asked if it was going to sxxxxlxxxtxx?
the driver thought for a while then shook his head...the tourist alighted the bus.
when in fact the destination the tourist wanted was just the next stop !! ( icouldnt help as i was sitting in the back but the tourist spoke loud n clear)
sometimes if i can help i do ( if im sitting in the front)..just to say yes or no , whether the bus going that way or not..
how can bus drivers not know the street or buildings along their routes..
it doesnt paint a good picture of our service thats for sure.
our us transport service is degrading to say the least.
good lah, take some more foreigners. crap service we're getting. what bloody talents?

As absurd as it sounds, the PTC members do not take public transport themselves, and yet they set the direction for changes to fares and systems. They will arrive in their fancy cars for the decision making meetings, but the outcomes of their decisions do not affect them one little bit.

Perhaps it should be mandatory for individual PTC members to clock in say 10 random user hours per month on train and bus services to legitimise their positions as PTC members. This personal first hand experience would be beneficial to all the people they are supposed to be serving.

Another problem is that the public transport is in the hands of listed companies whose primary consideration is to show a profit for shareholders. The PTC should not condone this with fare adjustments guaranteed to make a healthy profit. Public services companies should be operated on a revenue neutral basis.

Currently the transport providers are in a systemic mess.

Do you realize that the Land Transport Authority does not even bother to reply you even if you write to the Press!

Mr Lim,
Thank you for starting to do your MP job. This is truely reflected of PAP MPs and Ministers were out of touch.
May I suggest that you must feedback the surprised result to the newly appointed Minister for Transport, Mr Liu Tuck Yew other than LTA. It is the duty of Mr Liu to ensure that Public Transport Systems and Road Infrastructure must improve under his charge. He is pay Million Dollars of Salary to do his ministerial job for the next 5 years. So he is accountable for the overall improvement of Public Transpotaion Systems.

Now you know that the Public is not complaining on issues just for fun!!!!

He was shocked, and the previous mp did not ? why? because previous mp did not work at all!! They are sleeping!!! and why are we paying them so much for doing nothing?? Please Singaporean, remember the names of all those mp who are lazy and useless, make their name 遗臭万年！！！

wow! good job, i like.. keep it coming.. actually our SBS transport are supposed to help passengers if they dun noe the correct way.. many times, ive seen china bus captain not able to understand or answer our queries. and trust me, u will feel @#$% pissed and WTH??!?!!? china man cant understand english and many of our road names are in english and melayu, how to describe or explain to him??!?!?!

Very well done. Very pleased with effort. Better than doing nothing like most of the useless MPs we have. Thanks for letting us know on Facebook. Good to go with LTA guy as he's got nothing to do with the bus companies.

Wanna try the MRT next??

Fundamental problem is that the government and government linked companies have monopoly over everything in Singapore that is profitable viz. taxi, buses, healthcare, childcare etc that the service standards deteriorated significantly. Why must the government competes with her people in making a decent living in Singapore. Please allow private competition and allow the people to survive.

'Hope's comments are right, Lim should be ashamed of himself for creating 'positive' publicity for himself just to show he has empathy... I know for a fact that Mr Chiam See Tong has been checking and complaining to SBS whenever buses serving Potong Pasir residents are late or lacking since the 80's... I used to see him with a stopwatch along upper serangoon road on my way to school back then. And he never needed to publicize anything coz everyone in PP knew he did his job for them with integrity and sincerity...

All ministers and MPs must go out to check for themselves to see all the problems we ordinary citizens are suffering and experiencing. Pls dont be an armchair PAP MP.

Mr Lim and all the Ministers should give up their cars and travel by bus and trains to and fro work during those peak hours just like other Singaporeans workers. They should not bring their Ministry's officials along in order to be effective. All senior Civil servants should also do likewise so that they can see how lacking they and their staff have been in serving Singaporeans in their respective Ministry..

Good for Mr Lim Biow Chuan. At least he is listening to the people of his constituency and is making an effort to serve them. We should be expecting all MPs regardless of party to truly serve the people of their constituencies. However, we must not forget that this sudden change in attitude only comes about because of the increase support for the opposition. Hence, we must vote in more CREDIBLE oppositions in order that the incumbent party is always kept on its toes.

It's no point to do just spot checks ..... please use bus or mrt everyday when you go to work and back from work for next 1 year ... then you will know how "painful" it is ...

not only mountbatten, every part of Singapore
I wait for 1 1/2 hours for bus 506
PTC is sleeping, just lately they claim sbs, smrt is up to standard
cheena driver reckless

You see! you discourage people from using/buying cars by raising everything associated with cars, and you force us to take public transport, sbs bus service is unreliable you wait too long for the bus to come especially when transfering buses and trains, fire those who are in the sbs management bcos they are doing a POOR job!