Taxpayers to pay part of cost of additional buses deployed

Taxpayers and rail operator SMRT will pick up the tab for additional buses rolling out to ferry commuters displaced by shorter hours on the East-West Line for the next seven months.

"LTA and SMRT will also share in the costs of operating these additional bus services," the Land Transport Authority (LTA), a statutory board under the Transport Ministry, said in response to queries from The Straits Times.

The same goes for shuttle bus services between Joo Koon and Gul Circle stations, which will remain in place till at least June 2018 to serve commuters while train service between the two stations is suspended.

The authority announced this week that 17 East-West Line and two North-South Line stations will have shorter service hours from 8^th December to 31^st December, and that these stations will remain closed for the whole day on 10^th December and 17^th December.

Other sections of the line will also experience these shortened service times to allow resignalling work to be completed by June instead of the original December 2018 timeline. SBS Transit will be roped in to provide the additional buses, and private third-party bus operators are also expected to be called on as well.

But experts and industry players said it will be a challenge to provide enough buses to cope with the displaced train capacity. A senior manager of a bus operator who declined to be named said, "We may have some excess capacity at night, but in the morning, it will be quite tough. Even on Sundays, the trains are quite full. And if the bus services are not done well, there will be complaints."

University of Singapore Transport Lecturer Lee Der-Horng said, "During peak hours, one full-load train can have as many as 1,600 passengers, and it is two minutes per train. So the hourly passenger load can hit 48,000. You need more than 500 buses, and that's only for one direction." Prof. Lee said the volume will be lower for an isolated section of the line, and over weekends, but it will still be significant.

Singapore University of Social Sciences Economist Walter Theseira said, "I would expect less travel demand than normal because commuters are likely to consider alternate routes or to cancel their travel plans due to concerns about potential delays."

Both experts feel signalling provider Thales should bear some of the cost of financing the bus contingency plans. The LTA said 'other investigations' were still ongoing when asked if Thales should be made to foot part of the bill. The French company has said it took 'full responsibility' for the signalling glitches, which caused a collision on 15^th November and its massive fallout.