Transcript of Acting Minister Jeffrey Siow’s Media Doorstop Interview on Bus Connectivity Enhancement Programme

1.     Thank you all for coming down to Choa Chu Kang today. When I first became Transport Minister in May this year, I spoke about how one of my priorities was to improve public transport journey times. The key to doing that is to improve bus journey times, especially for residents who stay further away from the city. When you take the train, the journey is quite fast, but if you have to take a feeder bus, it can take a bit of time and adds to the journey time.

2.     In fact, this is what we have been doing in the last year with the Bus Connectivity Enhancement Programme (BCEP), where we have been adding new bus services, as well as adding buses to improve existing bus services. Now, improving the bus service network is not easy; it is resource intensive. You have to buy buses, you have to build a parking space like the depot and the bus interchange space, you also have to recruit and retain bus captains. In fact, it is the last part that is the most difficult, because the job of a bus captain is very tough and many Singaporeans don’t really want to do the job.

3.     Today, less than one-third of our bus captain population is Singaporean. One of the things we have been doing is raising the salaries of bus captains over time, but we have to do this carefully and judiciously, because we don’t want to raise the operating costs of the bus network too quickly. If we do that, then it has to be paid for by either taxpayers or raising the fares.

4.     Having said that, we have made good progress in terms of improving our bus network. In the last year, we have introduced a total of 14 new bus services across the island. We have also added buses to 52 bus services islandwide, and this has helped to reduce waiting times and extend the connectivity of the existing bus routes. This is all part of the BCEP, which is a $900 million commitment by the Government over the course of eight years. We will continue to improve the bus network over the next few years, and I will give you a couple of examples of how we have been doing it across Singapore. 

5.     For instance, in the northeast corridor, we know that the North East MRT Line is one of the more heavily used MRT lines in our network. In the last year, we have added new bus services, added four express bus services to the city from Hougang, Sengkang and Punggol. This has helped to provide another option for people in the northeast corridor. In the next year, we are going to add more such services – in fact, five more in the northeast corridor to help create more options so that commuters will have alternatives to taking the MRT. 

6.     For my own constituency, Chua Chu Kang GRC, residents here will know that we have been adding to the bus network. We have added new bus services from Tengah, as well as enhanced the existing City Direct Service 674. I have some good news to share – from October 26, we will have a new trunk service 984 which will bring our residents to two MRT stations – Bukit Panjang MRT station and Jurong East MRT station. On top of that, I have more good news – we are going to bring forward some of the planned bus services for next year to end of this year. There will be three of them – Service 451, 452 and 453. These are limited-stop bus services that will bring residents in the morning peak hours to the MRT stations more quickly. The MRT stations are Bukit Gombak, Beauty World and Bukit Batok stations respectively.

7.     These are all examples of things that we are doing islandwide, to give more options to commuters and broaden the bus network, to bring them to the MRT stations more quickly, particularly for residents who stay further away from the city. We will do more over the years – the BCEP is an eight-year programme and we are past the first year at the moment. We hope that commuters can look forward to this improvement.