Vision for Public Transport

Miss Penny Low asked the Minister for Transport what is the Ministry's vision of our public transport landscape in five years' time and what are the steps to be taken to move towards this five-year plan.

The Minister of State for Transport (Mrs Josephine Teo) (for the Minister for Transport): Sir, over the next five years, our focus will be on increasing the capacity of our public transport system, raising its service levels and enhancing the overall commuting experience. This is key to addressing commuters' current concerns and achieving our longer-term objective of encouraging more Singaporeans to take public transport.

We will continue to invest heavily in our public transport system to increase its capacity and coverage. The completion of the Downtown Line, North-South Line Extension and Tuas West Extension will add another 51 kilometres to our existing rail network. For existing rail lines, more new trains will be put into service and the signalling system for the North-South and East West Lines will be upgraded.

It will take time for these rail capacity improvements to be completed. In the meantime, we will significantly ramp up bus capacity to relieve daily congestion in public transport. The Government will partner the public transport operators to add about 800 buses over the next five years, or a 20% increase. Details will be given during the Ministry of Transport's (MOT's) Committee of Supply (COS) debate. We will also upgrade major bus stops and implement more bus priority measures to improve service reliability.

To enhance the accessibility and catchment of our public transport nodes, we will build more sheltered walkways for pedestrians, as well as cycling paths and parking facilities for cyclists. Over time, we will also make our public transport system more barrier-free and elderly-friendly by increasing the number of wheelchair-accessible bus services and barrier-free routes into MRT stations.

Lastly, we will ensure that public transport fares remain affordable by reviewing both the rail and bus financing frameworks and the public transport fare adjustment formula.

In five years' time, there will be significant progress in our efforts to make public transport a choice mode, and deliver a commuter-centric and well-integrated bus-rail network. Our strategies must serve us well even beyond the next five years and, therefore, we will also review the Land Transport Masterplan which was put out four years ago. Over the next year or so, we will engage key stakeholders and invite ideas from the public to develop an updated Masterplan to serve as our roadmap for the next 10 to 15 years.

Miss Penny Low (Pasir Ris-Punggol): I would like to thank the Minister of State for some early good news about the intention to improve the transport plan and also the people-oriented approach through feedback on improving the plan. May I ask two supplementary questions, Sir? One, what is the distribution plan for the additional 850 buses that are funded by the Government, and what would be the basis of prioritisation? In particular, in new towns like Punggol 21 where it is less well served than many other more mature towns, what are the plans in terms of increasing both the frequency as well as adding new routes to the new towns?

Mrs Josephine Teo: Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank the Member, Miss Penny Low, for her questions. Since the announcement during the Budget Statement that the Government will be injecting substantial bus capacity, we have received largely positive feedback and also many requests for their estates to be prioritised. These will all be studied very carefully and we will have to balance where the benefits can be spread out and also bring more convenience to the commuters. I assure the Member that this issue will be touched on in greater detail during MOT's COS debate.

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