Dear All,
It seems that my own experience with EZ Link is not unique. The
following
letter to ST forum has confirmed another over charge:
ST, April 5, 2005
Is fare updating system reliable for loop services?
LAST Saturday, at about 11.25am, my wife and I took an SBS Transit
service 9
from Bedok Interchange to Eastpoint in Simei for lunch.
When the person in front of me alighted, I noticed that his ez-link
card
showed a deduction of $1.53. Instinctively, I sensed that something
was
amiss and checked the deduction for my card when I alighted. The
amount also
showed $1.53.
As the distance from Bedok to Eastpoint is not very great, $1.53
seems a bit
too expensive.
The next day, I went to the ez-link website to check the deductions
on my
card. Not surprisingly, a deduction of $1.53 was made on April 2 at
11.43am
on my wife's card as well as mine.
Not convinced that the fare was $1.53, I went to the SBS website to
check.
It calculated my fare to be $0.83.
I noticed that SBS service 9 is a loop service to Airport Cargo
Road.
Perhaps the auto fare updating system could have mistaken the bus
to be at
the opposite bus stop at the point when I alighted.
The SBS website showed that the fare from Bedok to Eastpoint
(opposite bus
stop) to be $1.53. This raises a number of questions:
How many passengers have been overcharged while taking SBS service
9 all
this while?
Is this a frequent occurrence on loop services?
How reliable is the auto fare updating system for loop
services?
I would like to suggest a few ways to overcome this problem:
Incorporate into the system a means to countercheck the fare with
the time
taken for the entire journey. It would have been impossible for me
to have
travelled from Bedok Interchange to Airport Cargo Road to Eastpoint
in a
span of 20 minutes.
Link the system to the bus odometer to countercheck the fare with
the
distance travelled.
Chua Khee Seng
