walking in the rain

I’ve been taking public transport for as long as I’ve lived, and after all these years, I find that Singapore’s public transport has never lived up to its expectation. In fact, I think it completely sucks.

Here are 30 reasons why.

1) Waiting for the bus is a pain in the ass. Buses never arrive on time, and are often late. If they’re early, you’re late.

2) Waiting at the bus stop makes you exhausted. By fumes, that is.

3) The real-time bus arrival information via SMS isn’t quite real-time at all. Half the time, the timings are not accurate, especially for SMRT bus services. And soon enough, this service will be chargeable.

4) When it’s peak period and you hope for a double-decker bus to arrive, a single-decker one always does.

5) Buses are often crowded. If you get a seat, consider yourself lucky. Peak periods means you always have to stand, which is annoying.

6) Taking the bus means you have to squeeze with smelly people, and touch dirty handles and poles which many others have touched before.

7) The pleasantness of your bus ride depends on many others whom you commute with. If people are noisy, or, are damn smelly, well, good luck.

8) You don’t find peace on buses. TVMobile is always there to annoy you.

9) The yellow, ugly seats on new SBS Transit buses are rock hard. Gone are the days with softer blue seats.

10) On some buses, there are advertisements covering the entire bus. It’s hard to see where you are especially if you’re on an unknown route.

11) The air-conditioning of most buses are poor, especially all of the new SBS Transit buses. Not only there’s a weird smell to it, but it always gets warm after a while. Whatever happened to good old air-conditioning?

12) The new SBS Transit buses are wheelchair-friendly. I mean, I don’t wish to be mean, but come on, is there really a need for this? I don’t see wheelchair-bound people boarding these buses at all. In fact, I don’t see more than 5 people with wheelchairs boarding the bus in an entire year.

13) Half the bus is now reserved for wheelchair space. This means less seats and more standing area. We don’t pay good money to stand during our rides, you know.

14) There are now steps in buses. To get to your seats, you’ll need to climb them, and before you get off, you’ll need to climb back down. One day, someone’s going to have a really bad fall while climbing down when an emergency brake is applied. Whoever came up with the idea of having steps in buses should be shot in the head.

15) The speed of the bus depends on the bus captain. Half of these bus captains drive like snails, because they’re often ahead of time and can’t afford to reach the bus terminal earlier than scheduled.

16) Travelling on buses means you have to share seats with people. I hate that, because I dislike sitting with strangers. It gets even more annoying when some people take up more space than they should.

17) Many bus captains in Singapore these days are from China, and don’t understand a single word you say. Trust me, it’s annoying when you get lost, need to find your way around, and end up talking to a bus captain who does not only NOT answer your question, but replies in Mandarin with a strong Chinese accent. I’ve experienced it first-hand, and it’s not quite funny.

18) If someone comes on board and asks the bus captain for directions, it causes a delay, and it wastes everyone’s precious time. Sometimes, these China bus captains have no clue as to what is going on. By the time they’re done with it, the traffic light turns red. Time is lost not only during the conversation with the driver and passenger, but for waiting for the traffic light to turn green, which could very well be avoided. Two minutes gone.

19) Bus captains like slowing down when approaching traffic lights. When they see amber (and have more than enough time to pass through), they slow down, and...stop. Brilliant.

20) Bus bunching occurs ever so frequently. When this happens, the first bus becomes crowded and the one behind always ends up being almost empty. Then they start playing the overtaking game.

21) Different SBS Transit bus services have different waiting time. While waiting for, say, service 52, which is a single-decker service, 4 or 5 double-decker service 74s would have passed by. What’s up with that?

22) Waiting for trains to arrive is a pain in the ass too. The waiting time of SMRT trains has become worse over the years. SMRT promises to keep waiting time 6 minutes or less, but this promise is never kept. The arrival time for the following train often doesn’t show up because it always takes longer than 6 minutes to arrive. After waiting for 2 minutes, the “6 minutes” finally shows up. SMRT should really explain this.

23) During peak hours, trains are so full that you’ll have to wait 3 to 4 trains to pass. If you’re lucky, you get on with your face plastered at the door when it closes.

24) The air-conditioning in most SMRT trains is horrible most of the time. Similar to buses, it gets warm after a while.

25) The seats in Singapore trains are installed sideways. I hate that. You tend to bend over to the person next to you due to inertia. Other countries have the seats faced front, which is so much better. So much for saving space.

26) The speed of SMRT trains, as compared to other countries, is ridiculously slow. And to think it’s called Mass Rapid Transit.

27) The volume of the announcements on trains really needs to be tweaked. They are too soft on old train models, and way too loud on new ones.

28) MRT stations are run-down and are completely ugly. If you haven’t seen Jurong East Interchange, you should really check it out.

29) Crowded and noisy trains with smelly people are really off-putting.

30) Finally, public transport fares are always on the rise. What more can I say when we’re all getting such “world-class service”?

I won’t even go into taxis. Taxis are equally ridiculous and often do the disappearing act minutes before midnight. I’ve waited for a cab at a hotel with a friend from 11.15pm to 12am before, with no taxi driver accepting our phone booking even when we were willing to pay the booking fee.

I’m a person who doesn’t like to complain, and I don’t wish to be overly picky but Singapore’s public transport really sucks and I just can’t be bothered anymore. In fact, I’ve completely given up on it, and may just get my own car next year.

Also, try writing in to these bus companies. All they ever do is provide a standard reply and nothing gets done.

I’m glad that both SBS Transit and SMRT have been fined a huge sum earlier this year, for not meeting standards. Well done, Public Transport Council. The PTC should fine them more often for providing such lousy service with absolutely no standard.

Singaporeans should not be blamed for the recent drop in public transport share (http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1013808/1/.html). Doesn’t the government know why people would rather stick to their cars than rely on sucky public transport in Singapore?

It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?