Opening Address by Mr Baey Yam Keng, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Transport & Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment at the SMRT X NLB Nodes in Public Transport Network Launch Event

Morning, everyone.

1.     Thank you for joining us. I am very happy to be at SMRT’s launch of Nodes in Public Transport. This initiative is a collaboration between SMRT and NLB. As you know, public transport connects people and places. Every day, millions of people pass through our public transport nodes, so it does have the scale and reach, to do many good things beyond just taking people to places.

2.     With this initiative, SMRT is able to leverage on NLB’s vast resources of materials to bring it to our commuters. Just in Woodlands alone, we have students from Republic Polytechnic; we have residents who may be senior citizens, homemakers or working adults. Each of them would have their own needs or interests in terms of accessing reading materials. There are specially curated online resources to meet the needs of our different demographics, so this will promote a culture of reading and a spirit of lifelong learning.

3.     Very soon, commuters will be able to see QR codes all around at seven selected MRT stations and bus interchanges. We need the commuters’ support, to scan the QR codes, so that we know that this location is very convenient, very easy for people to access. With this demand, it will motivate SMRT and NLB to do more so that we can expand this initiative to more MRT stations and bus interchanges. This would bring these online resources closer to our commuters.

4.     I understand that the special curation includes electronic magazines such as Time Magazine, National Geographic and Reader's Digest, and all these are made free of charge! With Wireless@SG available, there is no reason why our commuters cannot just pick up your phone, scan the code, pick up what you enjoy and read along your commuting journey, whether you are waiting for the next bus or train. These contents will be refreshed regularly, so that commuters will have something new to look forward to every time.

5.     This is a good example of how our public transport operators can work with partners to make our journeys more caring, welcoming and inclusive. So I applaud SMRT for providing your spaces as a platform for partners to bring about their offerings, their services to our commuters. I would like to also thank NLB for coming on board this journey to bring about more content, so that our public transport will not just bring people from point A to point B in Singapore, but to anywhere in the world where the written word can bring our people to.

6.     Let us look forward to more exciting and more engaging journeys. Thank you very much.