Distance fares

On July 3rd, the LTA put forth a new policy to the rest of Singapore. According to them, this policy would allow them to save money when it came to travelling around by bus. However, did this really help us save money? Or was it simply just a policy to help the LTA earn much more money? What is this policy all about, that creates so much debate when it came to whether it helped commuters save, or spend more money?

Just a few years back, one paid the bus fare by entry, for example, when a commuter takes a bus once, and transfers over to the next bus to complete his journey, he has to pay twice the fees needed. Let's say that each time you take a bus, you pay 50 cents. With the old system, when you changed buses twice, you have to pay twice the fee, resulting in the commuter paying a dollar. This means that you pay more when you change more buses, and that it is cheaper to take a direct bus to the desired location. However, the situation is now changed. With the new policy in place, then the situation is reversed instead. One no longer has to pay by the number of times he takes the bus, but by the distance traveled instead. This policy benefits those who transfer buses often, as they no longer have to pay by the amount of buses they take, which would lead to a high bus fare since they transfer buses a lot, but pay by the amount of distance traveled.

Such a policy has its advantages and its disadvantages. The advantages of such is that it benefits those that transfer to other buses very often to complete their journey. The downside of such a policy is that it does not benefit those that actually take direct buses to their desired locations. Think of it this way. A commuter who has to take a direct bus to his desired location, say from Choa Chu Kang to Tampines, has to pay for the entry fee for the bus ride, say 50 cents. This small sum of money would allow him to reach his desired location. However, with a new policy, the same commuter has to pay a lot more since the bus fare is calculated by the amount of distance traveled and not the number of times he or she enters the bus. This results in him not just being unable to save money, but ending up paying more.

Let's have an example to allow ourselves to picture better. When a student like me takes a direct bus ride from my school to my house, I only need to pay 55 cents for the bus fare, since I only entered a bus once. However with this new policy, I instead have to pay 80 cents instead of the original 55 cents. If I take the bus for 5 days a week, that means I have to pay 25 cents more every day. I would have to pay 5 dollars more than I usually have to with the old policy. Does this actually help us to save money? Does it? IT DOES NOT.

I am not saying that it would not save money for ALL of us but majority of us. This does not mean that the LTA has not thought of anything to actually try to benefit those who do not benefit from the policy. There are policies to allow such a policy to benefit everyone. What is this policy then?

This policy is to reduce the amount of direct buses but instead increase the number of buses that lead to MRT stations instead, so that commuters can take a bus to an MRT station and continue their journey by MRT. HOWEVER, does this really benefit us? Would such a policy be a curse of a blessing?

I believe that such a policy is more of a CURSE than a blessing. Why do I think so? I would finish up this topic in the next post.