Lower ridership last month temporary as public readjusts to crunch time By Zhen Ming Boston Brahmin February 15, 2009 Print Ready Email Article
AT the still tender age of 22 this year, Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) network has come of age. And, akin to the prime of human life, it is also growing more attractive.
Many of us (my own family included), in fact, now take its convenience and its comforting presence (near our home) very much for granted.
On an average weekday, one in three of us will, without fail, hop on the country's 110km MRT network to go to work, school or play.
All in all, Singapore commuters took more than 554 million rides on the MRT in 2007 - up 66.1 per cent compared to the 334m rides taken a decade earlier.
When compared to ridership in 2006, the number of MRT passengers in 2007 jumped a 8.5per cent over 12 months, marking its largest yearly increase since 2004.
Lately, however, partly because of the economic downturn, there has been a noticeable slowdown in the pace of growth in MRT (as well as bus) ridership.
A preliminary estimate by the Transport Ministry shows that ridership last month for both the MRT and public buses actually fell by 3.1 per cent compared to the same period last year, probably due to cutbacks in discretionary trips.
But MRT ridership will get a special boost when the new Circle Line Stage3 (spanning five stations from Marymount to Bartley) opens on 30May.
So MRT ridership may hit yet another record high for this year as a whole, recession or no recession.
Expect also many more Singaporeans to temporarily (and readily) give up their cars and taxis in favour of the MRT - what with the promise of lower train fares in the pipeline.
By 2020, if a 6.5-million population is still on target, expect ground (and underground) travel demand in Singapore to rise to about 14.3 million journeys a day.
Given the land constraint of our small island state, expect MRT ridership (and other modes of public transport) to be strongly promoted.
Expect therefore this projected increase in travel demand in 2020 to be met in part by the MRT as it is the most space- and time-efficient means of moving large numbers of people.
To this end, to encourage even greater MRT ridership and, at the same time, to facilitate affordable public transport transfers, a distance-based through-fare structure has been adopted.
This through-fare structure will ensure that most commuters will only be charged a fare based on the total distance travelled in a journey - without incurring too heavy a transfer penalty when they switch between buses or between the bus and MRT.
By 2020, Singapore's MRT system would be a 33-year-old, taken-for-granted public transport service.
By then, the MRTnetwork would also be more extensive and definitely run at a much higher frequency.
But one thing will surely remain the same: Expect the MRT in the future to still remain just as crowded - with around four peak-hour passengers per square metre - as it now is today.
# Zhen Ming, a Harvard-trained economist based in Singapore, is a freelance contributor
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If you are willing to admit faults, you have one less fault to admit.
Demand eventually would similar to HK, long distance unlikely unless after MRT stop but short-mid still ok. MRT+bus is not cheap easily more expensive than taxi if 3 persons in group that's why surcharge comes into picture.
