New Standards for Buses

Haven't been posting much social commentary lately. But this is my response to a post at Mollymeek regarding the proposed new standards for buses. By the way, I've just discovered how to hyperlink my texts to the URLs...(so much for my Communications Degree)
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The problem here isn't the proposed changes, but rather, the use of statistics to provide a ambiguous facade of imagined change. More interestingly, I would like to know the base rate of these statistics before the new amendments were proposed. This will give commuters a more meaningful basis for comparison (at least quantitatively).

Let's take a couple of examples:

1. "Bus service reliability - for example, at least 85 percent of bus services should not deviate more than 5 minutes from the scheduled frequency".

The above statement says nothing at all. While Molly has rightly pointed out the "problem of the other 15 per cent", I would extend the argument further to question "so what 85 per cent of bus services do not exceed more than 5 minutes from the scheduled time"...

The simple answer (which most folks would be satisfied with) would be "higher frequency means less over-crowding" or something like that...What this statement fails to provide is the current base rate of percentage of buses leaving xx minutes from the scheduled time. So unless we know, for instance, that currently only 70 per cent of buses leave the interchange punctually, therefore causing the human traffic jam, the above statement is pretty useless.

2. Loading - for example, weekday peak period bus loading shouldn't exceed 95 percent.

Again, the above statement is a devilishly deceptive one because the problem here isn't the bus load (let's assume that safety requirements are met), but the bus routes that are the bane of many commuters.

Granted that it is impossible to please all commuters all of the time, but what I would like see SBS do is to reduce the number of intermediate stops for lengthy bus trips.

Take for instance, if I would to travel from Tampines to Clementi (Bus Service No. 10), the trip would take me almost two hours (during peak hours) because the bus travels through Bedok, Siglap, Mountbatten, Shenton Way, Pasir Panjang then Clementi...maximising profits for themselves and maximising stress for the commuter (who lives, say somewhere in the suburbs of Siglap and is caught between taking the train - which he has to take 20 minutes to reach - and the bus, which does not move).

In short, I think most people would not mind standing in a slightly over-crowded bus that cuts short travel time then sitting in a stationary bus (watching 20 repeats of TV Mobile advertisements)...