Public Transport made Interesting - LTA's scheme to manage morning peak crowd

(Image credits to its owner)

Taking the train to work every morning?? Read on.

Travel Smart Rewards - Earn rebates while doing (really) nothing when you travel on trains

It has been about 1.5 months since I joined Travel Smart Rewards - TSR (www.travelsmartrewards.sg).

In brief, this programme is LTA's move to encourage people to adjust their travelling schedule and move out peak period and into the less peak period. You get points for every km travelled. The incentive is that when you travel in one of the less peak period they designate (they call it decongesting period), you get your points multi folds to up to 8X. These points can either be used to redeem for cash at a very low rate: 1000 points = S$1 or they can be used to play their Spin to win game and win cash along the way. 1000 points can win you a few dollars (up to $200 as the say) depending on your luck. [You can set it in your settings page -See below]

(Screenshot from www.travelsmartrewards.sg)

The amazing thing about this is that there is an automatic spin feature which they will help you play the game every week and what you need to do is really NOTHING except to wait for the winnings to come in, and they will email you every week if you have a $1 or more winning(s).  Even crediting the cash out of the programme doesn't take you any effort. They will just credit your winnings into your EZlink card which you can use to offset your future trips.

(Screenshot from www.travelsmartrewards.sg)

I am not sure if I can be considered lucky compared to others out there who has been using this scheme but to have a rebate of $8 for 1.5 months into the programme, I am rather pleased. Of course, I travel a considerable distance from home to my work (about 20km) and I travel at the time the TSR people encourages us to travel every week day (ie: 8:45am to 9:45am), hence i believe I get more points than many people. 

As comparison, my sis whom I encouraged, has enrolled herself into this programme. She also travel 20+km everyday but she doesn't have the opportunity to travel many times in the decongesting period, hence her points is much less. Her winnings is about $2 for about a month of travel. Actually that's not bad at all in terms or rebates. Here's why:

Considering credit card rebates which is one of the other programmes which give you rebates back from your spendings on public transport. Citibank SMRT credit card gives $0.60 rebate but charges you $0.25 transaction fee for every auto-reload of $30 (default I think). Hence, the net rebates is $0.35. On a $90 or 3 reloads basis, the rebates for the month is $1.05. 

Hence even if winnings is $2 from TSR, the rebates is already double of what the credit cards are offering. What's more, the money savvy people will register and use their Citibank SMRT cards into the TSR programme and earn rebates from both sides. (It's allowed)

So start register yourself into the programme and start earning the rebates. Anyway, all the effort you need is the registration process and everything afterwards is automatic - no effort required.

(This is not a sponsored post and I just want to share my experience on something that's I feel is beneficial to me and I would like you, my readers to know about it and take advantage of it)

Republic of Singapore Independence Day

HAPPY NATIONAL DAY 

SINGAPORE!!

(Animated gif source: Wikipedia.org)

"Please mind the platform gap"

 Incident happened on 01 Jun 2012

Incident happened on 13 Jun 2012

（Both photos from stomp.com.sg)

Sometimes I just wonder. The MRT system have been running for 20 over years and over all these years, there has been nought people who got stuck the platform gap, or at least reported. Then in a period of less than 15 days, there are not 1 but 2 incidents that people's leg got stuck in the platform gap.

I don't think it is these people who are careless, and I sympathize with them too as they are victims. The problem as the technology improves, isn't these gap supposed to be smaller?

Shouldn't it be a point where SMRT constant announcements of "Please mind the platform gap" can be eliminated totally because there is no chance that a person's leg can fall though the small gap. Not even one of a child. 

The way I see it, as subway trains technology improves, the gap seems to be getting bigger. Big enough for a leg to go through. Maybe in the next 10 years, the gap gets so big that the train operators will have to change its announcement to "Please mind and not fall into the platform gap"

Train Stations Display

(Photo credits to its owner)

I don't quite understand why SMRT (and SBST too) stations only have 2 Plasma / LCD display (which is visible but not particularly big) at the same position to show the next train arrival. It is usually at one side (not centre) of the platform.

Hence, from the other end of the station, even if the timing is displayed full sized on the screen, one will have to strain one's eye to roughly make sense of what it is displaying.

To make matters worse, probably due to revenue issues, SMRT have to put advertisements (usually movies trailers) on these screens and the timing size is reduced to a tiny font on top of the advertisement which is usually not visible to one of average eye sight 1 carriage away.

Why don't the train operators consider have an extra screen at the other end of the platform? With prices that every family can afford, these flat screen displays cannot be too expensive for the train operators to buy.

To go one step further, since there are so many 'gei gong' (useless) announcements, why don't we replace some useless ones with useful ones like
"The next South-bound train will arrive in 2 minutes", "East-bound train will arrive in approximately 3 minutes".

Won't that be more useful than all those current announcement?

And you can have all the advertisements on the screen you like.

Solving Public Transportation 2

My grandmother, who goes out once in a blue moon, commented that the train doors are like lift doors. 2 doors which slides open and a window at the top middle portion for each door.

To us who take MRT on a daily basis, it is just a vehicle that takes us to places. 

So when my grandma says the analogy, it really struck me hard!! 

IF the MRT is like a lift, then what we need to solve public transportation could be 

what would be like an escalator.  

Have you ever taken the lift at crowded buildings / places (e.g. Shopping Centres during weekends or even MRT station during peak hours). The process will be wait > Lift comes > See if you can get in>If Yes proceed, If No, wait for the next one> process repeats itself again

On the other hand, in the very same building, have you notice how efficient the escalator is? People just hop-on, you don't have to wait, it moves slowly but you are still progressing, before you know it, you reached the next level while the people at the lift is still waiting. The amazing thing is while the lift can carry 20 people in one trip, the escalator can carry 20 people constantly at any one moment.

So to solve the problem of overcrowding trains, will we be able to think of something which can be like an escalator? Well, human mind is infinite, so it is not a matter of whether we can or not, but how soon can we? 

Here's an interesting concept that I found on youtube to illustrate the concept. Of course, what needs to be improved is that there is still a limited space in the carriage, so waiting will still be a concern when the crowd builds up. What we should be looking at is something that will be able to flow continuously to a point where nobody need to wait.

Carriage that clips onto a non-stop train 

(Video rights to its owner)

But instead of a training coming to carry the carriage, maybe the track should keep on moving or something to move the carriage when it is ready to go on track. Then there should be plenty of carriages at each station to prepare for boarding. Carriages uses a third track to zoom back to the place where the crowds are (suburbs in the morning and city in the evening) once it reaches the terminal station.

Solving Public Transportation 1

Most of the time, during peak hours, you will notice a one-person-in-a-car situation. As the conventional car is now built to carry 5 people in the case of a saloon car, 4 or at least the 3 seats are the back are left un-utilised. So a more efficient form of transport would be a motorcycle, where it does not take up some much road space, it is able to squeeze in between the slow moving cars and it causes less pollution.

Yet in Singapore weather and traffic conditions, many would not want even consider that option, possibly due to these factors: 

a) Exposure to risk 1 - Rider is outside vehicle when the vehicle is in motion, thus more dangerous. (the talk about metal outside man and man outside metal)

b) Exposure to risk 2 - Non stability, more likely to fall, again more dangerous.

c) Heat - Motorbike, despite that it is much cheaper, has no air conditioner. And AC is important in Singapore weather.

A three wheeler motorbike (scooter) below is now in the market but it does not eliminate point (a) and (c) above.

So it is possible that we have a smaller car, that of a motorbike size, yet let the person be inside the car and have air conditioner. 

Consider this:

The above is the Peel P50, smallest production car in the world.  If you still cannot see how small it is, here is another picture： 

Manufacturers have been looking at alternatives as well, what they called Narrow Track Vehicles including Nissan Tandem, Renault Twizy, VW L1, VentureOne, etc..

Review of Renault Twizy： 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vJE929qyug

（They disabled embedding) 

3.5hours charge, 60 miles (100km)

Range 47 miles (75km)

Both above may not have doors or windows but if you look closer, it is a small enclosed space 

where with some innovation and research, I am sure that installing air con into these vehicle 

is not too difficult an issue. 

Move to the rear?

Published on TODAY papers, Friday, 17 Feb 2012, PP26

If you want people to move to the rear of the bus, install an additional door behind (see below). That's almost 100% sure people will move towards the rear.

Same bus model as the A22 that the SMRT is using. I don't see why not? 

Public Buses in SG - Doors

I am always in the impression that the doors are designed to be at or near the centre of the bus because it cannot be fitted to the rear, probably because of the engine compartment, height, etc. 

However, if you can see from top photo below, for full low floor bus, it is actually possible. There are in fact 3 doors, the front door, the middle door and the rear doors. This bus has its physical dimension the same as SMRT bus below (Both the A22 Man - the top one being the hybrid while the SMRT's is a full diesel)

MAN A22 Hybrid Demonstrator

SMRT Man A22

And if you had observed that the situation in SG is typically this:

Read: Overcrowding

Read: Overcrowding

...and the fact that 80% of the time people refused to move in all the way to the rear of the bus, due to the fact that it is harder to alight if you are at the extreme end of the bus, why hasn't SMRT or in general bus operators in Singapore thought of building an additional rear door at the back? 

To be fair, I believe that SMRT has already requested to push the doors to as backwards as possible but there are still between the wheels, and still 2 instead of 3.

For space constraint, which I think is one of the consideration, I think that the proposed rear door does not need to be the full size as there is already a middle door. A half size (one door instead of 2 doors, just like those seen in travel coaches) should suffice. 

I believe that it will probably increase efficiency of the service, especially on those route where passengers turnaround are very quick. For example, the feeder services.

Taxi Fare Hike: Comments in Newspaper

Published Wednesday, December 7, 2011 TODAY Newspaper

How true...Comfort seems to be making the problem worse rather than better. 

One thing that makes me wonder is that while other taxi companies decision-makers would have thought of  discussing the fare hike FIRST with their fleets of drivers, it is a huge wonder why CDG didn't think of it?  

Eventually, it leads to Comfort drivers slapping them back with reports of fears backlash of the move - less people will take cabs due to the higher price. At least for the time being.

See article below.

Published Wednesday, December 7, 2011 TODAY Newspaper

Man A22 Bus - UNIQUE

Soon, we will see on our streets more of these unconventional buses as SMRT has bought 200 of these MAN buses (yes, the same manufacturer for the 5-tonners for SAF)

Good looking yet unique.

Image taken from BUSES[IN]GAPORE. All rights and credits belong to the owner of the blog. http://busesingapore.blogspot.com/2011/09/smrt-buses-man-nl323f-a22-production.html

Taxi Fare Hike: Interesting Comments

Recent post on: Comfort Delgro revised Taxi Fare Structure Upwards

See extract of the current and new structure below this post:

Comments on FB and other website generally shows commuter seeing red and fare hike unfair - most people cost will go up unless you are that kind who takes taxi during peak hours only.

Interesting highlights includes:

With the new structure, it has become:

6pm to midnight: 25% surcharge
Midnight to 6am: 50% surcharge
6am to 9.30am: 25% surcharge

Only the period between 9.31am to 4.59pm, there is confirmed NO surcharge. (and that is the period likely you are claiming company, so who cares...)

5pm to 6pm, there will be a $3 surcharge if you are in town, including Sun and PH.

With so many surcharge period, CDG might as well label 9.31am to 4.59pm period as the DISCOUNT period :=P

Taxi Fare Hike: CDG increase Taxi Fares

Recent news on: Comfort Delgro revised Taxi Fare Structure Upwards
(http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_741449.html)

Extract of current and revised fare structure

Current and Revised Flag Down - 1st km
$3.00 (Sonata) vs $3.20 (Sonata)
1km to 10km: $0.20 for every 385m vs $0.22 for every 400m
Above 10km: $0.20 for every 330m vs $0.22 for every 350m
Waiting time: $0.20 for every 45sec vs $0.22 for every 45 sec

Current and Revised Peak Period Surcharge
35% of metered fare vs 25% of metered fare (lowered)
Mon-Fri: 7.00am-9.30am vs 6.00am to 9.30am
Mon-Sat: 5.00pm-8.00pm vs 6pm to midnight (and include Sun and PH)

Current and Revised City Area Surcharge
$3.00
Mon-Sat: 5.00pm-Midnight vs 5.00pm-Midnight (and include Sun and PH)

Current and Revised Call Booking Fees
Current Booking
Peak Period: $3.50 vs $3.30 (lowered)
Mon-Fri: 7.00am-9.30am vs 6am to 9.30pm
5.00pm-11.00pm vs 6pm-Midnight (and include Sun and PH)

(Source: CNA website)

Well done, CDG!!