SINGAPORE: An online citizen has asked people for their honest opinion on whether Singapore’s public transport system deserves the praise it receives.
The netizen wrote on Reddit on Friday (May 19) “Lately we have been seeing many articles about Singapore’s public transport system being one of the best in the world, with many surveys ranking Singapore’s among the most highly rated among her citizens.”
“My personal experience is that the public transport in Singapore still pales a lot in comparison to private transport (car/taxi/motorbikes). Just doing a quick search of several of my own frequently used trips on Google Maps shows that commute times public transport is usually 3-4 times of that of commuting by car. ” The netizen cited a commute from Queenstown to NUS Business School taking 10 minutes by car but much longer by public transport, taking 47 minutes.”
Given this, the netizen asked Singaporeans, “Do you guys think Singapore’s public transport deserves the praises that it is receiving? Or do you think that there is much to be improved upon?”
A handful of netizens took to the comments section of the post to share their insights.
While many positive points were acknowledged, points for improvement were also made.
“I think public transport is still run with the operator’s mindset rather than the user’s mindset,” said one. “It is efficient, with stops all over the place. The trade-off is having very slow public transport. Express services are the way ahead, in my opinion. Not the scam ones we have now, which turn into regular bus services after a certain point.”
Another said that travel time should not be used to measure how good a transport system is and compare public and private transport. “Public transport is serving the public and you have multiple stops in between, private transport as the name suggests is private so you are free to only use it for your own needs, with the added convenience coming with a cost (COE/petrol/maintenance),” the user wrote. “Put it this way, if public transport commute time is comparable to private transport – nobody would be owning their own automobiles right? Also, since we are debating whether it’s one of the best then can you name a place where public transport commute time is comparable to private commute – chances are no such place exists yeah?”
The netizen then argued that what should be used as points for comparison are factors such as connectivity, cost, frequency, reliability, and cleanliness.
Another netizen brought the comparison to an international level, saying, “Our public transport beats every North American major city and the few European cities I’ve visited. Our coverage is generally better and it’s way cheaper as well. A one-way journey usually costs between 3-4 SGD regardless of distance.”