As you all know, there're now 3 diff bus services at the customs
to ferry passengers across the causeway.
Now I think this is being unfair to us travelers because it
directly affects the waiting time, since you can only choose 1 out
of the 3 lanes to queue up.
So how does that affect waiting time, actually? Ok, let's assume
that there can only be 15 buses/hr passing thru the customs and
these amount of buses are calculated to be sufficient to ferry an
assumed number of 1500 passengers/hr so that the number of
travelers in the custom won't reach saturation.
Now, unless there's a population explosion or mass immigration(ppl
starts living in Spore), the number of travelers will more or less
remain predictably same. Naturally, the number of buses does not
increase or decrease for each hour.
All was good until Transitlink and Smiley decided to have a pie of
the market share. To be fair, each company can only dispatch 5
buses/hour(probably regulated by LTA or the companies themselves)
to meet the quota of 15buses/hour to ferry the travellers,
us.
Some of you might not know but Smiley buses only accept cash. Yes,
although Transitlink and SBS accept EZlink, travelers are still
stuck to whichever service they took prior to entering the customs.
The explanation for this is that when you take say 950 from
Woodlands Interchange, you HAVE to take the same service to enjoy a
rebate. In addition, if you take 170 from Kranji or wherever there
is 170 within Singapore, the same rule applies. Thus, if you take
950 to the customs, and then change to 170 or the Smiley bus, you
pay the extra, and that my friend, does not guarantee you a fast
transport. Vicious isn't it?
Ok, back to why we have to wait longer for buses. If have done the
math, you would have figured out by now that instead of the usual
bus frequency of 15 buses/hour that is equivalent to 1 bus every 4
minutes, you now have to settle with 5 buses/hour(only 1 choice of
service, remember?) which comes to be 1 bus every 12 minutes.
That's 3 times the previous wait time!
Get the subject title now?
Opinions and Suggestions:
I strongly feel that this is when monopolies are better off in this
situation. The government has to think of the people's well being
and not constantly worrying about not lining their pockets enough
from the taxes they get from the transport companies.
Either allow only 1 company to ferry passengers across the causeway
or create a subsidiary bus company that ONLY travel in a loop
within the causeway.