During the recent budget debate, Transport Minister Raymond Lim
told parliament that the approach to centralised bus planning is to
' identify any gaps in connectivity and try to plug them'.
Some of these gaps include cutting back on complicated routes to
ensure that the services run more efficiently.
What are some of the potential pitfalls that can be avoided, as
details of the centralised bus planning ' blueprint ' are being
worked out?
Lin Jiamei finds out.
The idea is to avoid a radical ' big bang ' approach with major
changes to the bus system that will confuse and in turn put off
many commuters.
Take Seoul for instance , a landmark reform of its public bus
system was carried out in 2004 when many major changes were
introduced.
-- one of which was the change in bus routes and numbers,
overnight.
Professor Kim Kwang Sik from Sungkyunkwan University was involved
in the planning of the Seoul Bus Reform.
He admits that the situation was ' very bad ' within the first week
of implementation.
"For instance the blue bus, it has three digits, 1-0-1, means from
zone 1 to zone 0 and bus number 1. In my case, if I used bus 56,
from 1 July 2004, overnight, it became 101, completely changed. So
although we advertised the changes in bus numbering and everything
related to the bus reform, about 6 months before, but still people
did not give attention. "
Adding to the complexity of the changes is the introduction of new
players to the market, which in the case of Singapore, could be
seen as early as next year.
But how will the potential new operators be able to compete with
the existing operators?
Stephen Lucas is Chairman of the Australia's Bus Industry
Confederation.
"Quite often smaller fleets and operators are able to deliver more
innovative solutions than large operators who really end up being a
quasi government operations. SBS for example is so large that it
mirrors in some ways the way we used to operate in Australia before
our public sector operators were privatised. How many is too many
and how many is not enough. There is not really an answer to that
and it depends on the design of the system and for the planners to
think very carefully what outcome they want out of this. "
--938Live