SBS Transit

Buses buses buses. Where in the world would we be without them? They ferry us to work and ferry us home. Comes at a pretty regular timing and gets the job done. Now, there are even more reasons to take the bus since the price of oil is increasing like the end of the world is coming and the gov is helping out by imposing more fines on an already crowded road so that buses now have the power of the right of way during peak hours. So we should all switch to using buses and ditch our cars......or should we?

Now, i'll take my stand and say my answer is no. I'll be basing my idea on the bus service 27 that goes from Hougang to Changi Airport and back.

Reasons are as follows:

1: Buses do not come at regular intervals. We've heard this countless times and the morning working adult population who needs to get to work at a certain time have definitely felt this. Regardless of the implementations of rules and fines, buses simply still come late. Of course, we've seen the compaign they ran about "unseen reasons" behind the lateness but honestly, poor planning is as much a factor. 27 is not a new service, in fact, its been ongoing for 8 years at least and still no improvement is seen. Buses are still packed and still late.

2: Buses with huge traffic do not get upgrade to double decks. Same problem, bad planning. 27 has a big enough traffic to at least warrant a double deck bus for its services. This kills 2 birds with one stone since it'll allow people to board faster with its bigger capacity and thus will not delay the bus journey. However, till now, it is still not done. The reasoning continues to elude me as to why there's no upgrade.

3: Space is simply not sufficient and squeezing with a whole bunch of people simply isn't a great feeling. Especially since i'm paying close to $2 to go on a journey to work, at least i expect a little space to breathe and hopefully sit down. Somehow, paying to be packed like sardines does not entice me one bit.

4: With company comes inconsiderate people and to keep it short, they irritate the hell out of me.

In its defense, i do not blame the bus drivers although sometimes, i do need to. (Try being 30 minutes late for an important meeting because the driver insists on driving 30km/h on an EMPTY road and you'll get the idea). Otherwise, they are not to blame. The planning department is the problem. They need to wake up and smell the thorns. We're all a part of the system, make life better for us all eh?

SBS Transit is currently one of the duopoly in the commercial bus industry, together with SMRT buses. My review here is a general one as there are good and bad experiences in my whole life.

I feel that using this 2 bus company in comparison, the waiting frequency for SBS tends to be longer. Many a times, it is frustrating to wait for very long for the bus to come. The worst I've experienced is 1 hour. I mean, in this modern time, can our society still tolerate such absurd frequency? If they know certain buses or routes are busy at times, then they should deploy more buses to make the consumer's money worth.

I prefer the newer buses, which are better maintained or simply the case of being 'new'. The first few batches of Superbus "double-decker air-conditioned" are really dirty now, apparent with the darken seats and rubbishes and even, bugs seen at the corner and the end of the bus. I also don't like double-deck buses because they tend to be slower, which worsen my cause especially when I'm rushing for time. For bigger capacity buses, I prefer the bendy buses by SMRT, whose concept works the same and operates faster too.

Lastly mention the service level of the bus captains. There are those bad ones here and there but generally, they have been very knowledgeable due to their experience in this line and do try their best to help passengers out in doubt. SMRT drivers are more rude and do not really care about the safety of passengers, while SBS drivers do take note especially of the elderly to take their seat before embarking.