More commuters go for parallel bus services

Bus services which were rolled out under the billion-dollar scheme to improve public transport has proved to be a hit among commuters.

11 routes which operate from residential towns to the city, termed 'parallel' bus services by the Land Transport Authority (LTA), experienced a hike in ridership since their respective rollouts. Ridership on some routes has even doubled.

For example, Service 850E which runs from Yishun has an average daily ridership of 489 in March this year - a substantial grow from 199 in February last year. Similarly, figures from LTA show that daily rides on Service 951E rose from 221 last June to 509 in March.

Commuters have given feedbacks that these routes, operated by SBS Transit, SMRT and private bus companies, provide shorter travelling time and better comfort compared to trains.