AYER RAJAH ESTATE (Improvement of bus services)

Encik Abbas Abu Amin asked the Minister for Communications and Minister for Labour if the number and frequency of bus services for the residents of Ayer Rajah Estate (Dover Road) can be increased, particularly during weekends and on public holidays.

The Minister for Communications and Minister for Labour (Mr Ong Teng Cheong): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, Ayer Rajah Estate, along Dover Rood, is directly served by five bus services. These are Services 33, 176, 185, 196 and 212. These services provide extensive coverage which includes Jurong, Telok Blangah Road, Shenton Way, Queenstown, Chinatown, Geylang, Kampong Chai Chee and the new towns of Clementi and Telok Blangah. Besides, Service 212, which charges 15 cents, provides a convenient connection to Commonwealth Avenue terminal where another 13 services with an even wider coverage are available. In addition to their wide coverage, these five services are also operated at reasonable frequencies that are comparable to those of other SBS services.

On weekdays and Saturdays, the service interval or headway during the peak hours ranges from five to nine minutes. On Sundays and public holidays, the services are operated at intervals of about eight to nine minutes. However, Service 212 is not operated on Sundays and public holidays because of low demand. A recent survey showed that the capacity provided on Sundays and public holidays was adequate to meet the demand. The same was found to be true of weekdays with the exception of Service 176 which was found to be slightly over-loaded during the rush hours. To remedy this, two buses were added in July.

I wish to assure the hon. Member for Pasir Panjang that SBS will continue to monitor the demand closely and add more buses where this is warranted.