SINGAPORE: A free shuttle bus service for Marine Parade residents is seeing starkly different levels of ridership, with some routes having close to zero passengers at certain times but others having over 20 passengers.
Responding to CNA’s queries, a spokesperson for the Marine Parade grassroots organisations said that the service has seen “steady usage across most routes”.
Nevertheless, the initiative will be refined based on ridership data and residents’ feedback. Schedules or routes may be adjusted before the end of the year, the spokesperson said.
The service was launched on Jul 8 on a one-year pilot for residents of Marine Parade GRC, MacPherson SMC and Mountbatten SMC.
About three months on, CNA reporters took four of the seven routes offered to residents to check the popularity of the service every weekday over two weeks and spoke to passengers on their feedback.
The service, which would cost S$1 million (US$776,000) a year to operate, is funded by a S$200,000 one-off grant from the South East Community Development Council (CDC) with the rest coming from donations raised by the CDC and the Marine Parade grassroots organisations.
In August, Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth Alvin Tan told parliament that the Marine Parade town cluster will eventually have to raise its own funds to cover the entire cost of the operation, with “many aspects of the service to validate and to refine” through the one-year pilot. He added that other CDCs would study the experiences and findings from the pilot first before considering starting similar initiatives.
Under the pilot, the seven routes run across Braddell Heights, MacPherson, Mountbatten, Geylang Serai, Kembangan-Chai Chee, Marine Parade and Joo Chiat, with buses calling at amenities such as polyclinics, hawker centres and MRT stations.
CNA reporters found that two routes had close to zero passengers on some days, while others were significantly more popular as the buses were half-full at morning and lunch timings. They also found that ridership tended to peak in the morning and taper off in the afternoon.
The service is targeted at the non-working crowd and runs during off-peak hours – 10am to 4pm on weekdays, excluding public holidays.
Each route has between five and seven stops, and runs in a loop lasting between 35 minutes and more than an hour.
Residents can register by downloading the TongTar Riders app or can visit a community club in the area, where they can sign up for a card to take the shuttle service.
They will have to scan the app’s barcode or tap their card to board the bus.
