Ministry of Transport Potential savings from streamlining public transport
I saw this news in Oct 2019 on CNA.

SINGAPORE: Taxpayers in Singapore subsidise about S$1 for every trip made on buses and trains here, said Senior Minister of State for Transport Janil Puthucheary on Wednesday (Oct 9) during an interview with CNA938.

According to figures released by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) earlier this year, 7.54 million trips are made on buses and trains here daily.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/fare-increase-needed-rising-cost-bus-train-operations-janil-11984102

My observation.
The subsidy works out to $2.75 billion a year. We do not know if this is just on operating cost or does it include depreciation on the capital investment?

If the subsidy represents one third of the cost, the total cost of running the train and buses is $8.5 billion a year.

I guess that the operations can be streamline to reduce duplication and inefficiency. If there is a 15% improvement, we can save $1.3 billion a year.

The potential savings can be obtained by streamlining the bus operations. We now run 370 bus services. It will be difficult to achieve optimal operations with so many services. We should restructure the bus services to have express services to travel long distances (with fewer stops) and local services to serve each town.

The restructured services can be run more efficiently and will result in less travel time for the commuters.

Tan Kin Lian

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