17 February 2015: Most of the sawtooth berths at Boon Lay Bus
Interchange have extremely long queues (two or more rows beyond the
metal structures) by the time the buses arrive. The queue on 243
was too long, so I went to take 179, which has 100% double decker
buses at high frequency, with very little demand. When I was on the
bus, I noticed the traffic congestion on the roads around Boon Lay
Bus Interchange was more severe than usual. For the first time in
my life, I actually saw vehicles piling up from Jurong West Central
3 to the MRT tracks and along Jurong West Street 63, and almost
quite near to Jurong West Street 65.
While traffic congestion is common on roads around every bus
interchange (eg. Jurong East and Clementi) across the island, I do
not think it is common to see extremely long queues at sawtooth
berths, even at this hour (6-7pm).
In my opinion, I feel that the LTA should create bus service(s)
that provides alternative to heavily utilised bus services - at
least during peak hours - for people staying in Jurong West Gek Poh
and Pioneer to go home.
The LTA may want to create a bus stop along Boon Lay Way, next
to Boon Lay MRT Station, and have bus services there bringing
people to N7. N8 and N9, and to the MRT. The direction of travel is
actually against the traffic congestions during peak hours, so the
ride should be quite smooth.
Alternatively, the LTA may want to remove a sizeable number of
bus services at Boon Lay Bus Interchange and transfer them to other
bus interchanges, such as Joo Koon Bus Interchange. It may want to
build a larger Jurong East Bus Interchange and transfer even more
bus services there.
After all, the regional centre is Jurong East, not Boon Lay. I
do not understand why Boon Lay Bus Interchange is the regional bus
interchange when the infrastructure is more compatible at Jurong
East (eg. Jurong East has two MRT lines, whereas Boon Lay only has
one).
