Oral Reply by Senior Minister of State for Transport Chee Hong Tat to Parliamentary Question on TEL Bus Optimisation and Bus Financials

Mr Ang Wei Neng asked the Minister for Transport

a.     whether LTA has plans for a major revamp of bus routes following the stages opening of Thomson-East Coast Line; and

b.     what is the number of current bus routes with fare revenue (i) exceeding operating cost and (ii) falling behind operating cost; and (c) of these, which are trunk and feeder services respectively in 2019 and 2020

Reply by Senior Minister of State for Transport Chee Hong Tat:

1.     The Government is expanding the rail network from 230km to 360km by the early 2030s, with the progressive opening of new stations and MRT lines. When the expansion is completed, our MRT network coverage will be comparable in coverage as major cities like New York and London. Eight in ten households will be within a ten-minute walk of a train station.

2.     Past experience shows that the opening of new rail lines would lead to significant falls in ridership of parallel bus services. If we keep the services as they are, it will mean more operating subsidies, and greater use of public funds.

3.     In 2019, we have a total of 356 bus services. Only 11 services could generate fare revenue that covered operating costs. The other 345 could not generate enough fare revenues to cover operating costs. The difference was made up by Government subsidies amounting to about $1 billion. In 2020, with public transport ridership falling due to COVID-19, only two feeder services were able to generate revenues to cover their operating costs.

4.     To maintain financial prudence and meet new demand for bus services, LTA needs to continually review bus routes, and implement changes to those with low ridership. These are often tough decisions with difficult trade-offs on what we choose to spend on at the national and local levels, and after careful consideration of the impact on different groups of commuters. We seek the understanding and support of Singaporeans to make such  adjustments from time to time, in order to optimise our limited resources to benefit as many commuters as possible.