[SINGAPORE] Acting Transport Minister Jeffrey Siow aims to halve travelling times on some journeys for public transport commuters.
His priority is to strengthen transport networks in the city and within HDB estates – particularly those that are a little farther away from the city, such as Tengah and Punggol.
For instance, he wants to reduce the time taken to travel between Tengah and the city centre via public transport to “one to two times” that of a private car journey, he told the media at a community event at Tengah Community Club on Sunday (Jun 8).
At the new estate of Tengah in the west of Singapore, some residents have complained about the lack of amenities and transport options.
Currently, public transport between Tengah and the city centre takes two to three times longer than travelling by car, Siow said.
For example, travelling from the Plantation Grove estate in Tengah to Orchard takes close to an hour, as it includes a five-minute walk, a 10-to-15-minute bus ride and an MRT ride involving at least one line transfer.
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Siow, who is also an MP for Chua Chu Kang GRC and looks after the Brickland district of Tengah town, said he hopes to reduce the time taken on all public transport journeys for all new towns across the island to one to two times that of private car rides.
He noted that it is usually the first- and last-mile journeys of travelling to and from the train station – which involve walking, taking feeder buses or both – that prolong the time taken to complete a public transport journey.
“If we can try to do that a little bit better, improving the walkability of the town, improving the density of the bus network, we should be able to bring the journey times down and make public transport more competitive than private transport,” he said.
“And we will be doing that all across Singapore at the estates that are farther away from the city, that is my priority.”
He added: “Basically, I want to make public transport journeys competitive with private transport journeys.”
This is Siow’s first public appearance since he became Acting Transport Minister on May 23. He took over from Chee Hong Tat, who is now the Minister for National Development.
Siow has plans to boost public transport in his GRC, with a slew of new bus services.
On June 8, he greeted residents on stage at the start of the community event, saying: “Because you know, I’m now the Transport Minister, my home ground must be okay, right?
“So we will talk about transport plans for Brickland and Tengah, and you’ll hear very good news very quickly.”
Siow noted in his speech that Tengah is a new estate that is still in the progress of being completed.
He said there are “four Cs” or issues that the authorities want to address: no coffee shops, not enough childcare centres, not enough transport connectivity, and problems with the centralised cooling system in residents’ homes.
But he reassured residents that a multi-agency committee has been set up to rectify these issues as more residents settle into their new homes.
The new bus services for Tengah and Brickland include service 872, which will be launched on Aug 10, providing residents with a direct link between Tengah and Chinese Garden MRT station, said fellow MP for Chua Chu Kang GRC Choo Pei Ling, who oversees the Tengah ward.
Dr Choo said the new bus service will start from Tengah Bus Interchange before plying Tengah Boulevard, areas in Bukit Batok, Plantation Crescent in Tengah and Jurong Town Hall.
It will then stop at Chinese Garden station before looping at Jurong East.
Siow noted there will be a second bus service that will also be ready by the end of 2025, linking residents in Brickland to Bukit Panjang and Jurong East stations.
More details will be shared closer to the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2025, he added.
Siow said a city-direct service connecting Brickland to the central area of Singapore and a privately operated bus route from Brickland to one-north will be introduced in 2026 to take residents to their workplaces “earlier, faster and more efficiently”.
Asked why the bus service to one-north will be run by a private operator, he said: “There are certain routes (in which) occasionally there is enough demand, and private operators are prepared to do it while public transport operators are not quite ready to do it yet.”
He noted that running private-operated bus routes could sometimes result in higher fares than the public bus system, but these private operators have more flexibility to roll out such routes faster.
Siow added that the authorities can introduce some of these routes in the short term using private bus operators, and consider incorporating them into the public bus network in the long term if they perform well.
Also coming up by the end of 2026 are four express feeder services, which will ferry residents from their homes to the four nearby MRT stations, he said.
The stations are Beauty World station on the Downtown Line, Bukit Gombak and Bukit Batok stations on the North-South Line, as well as Jurong East station that is on both the North-South Line and East-West Line, he added.
Looking forward, Siow said the upcoming completion of the Jurong Region Line will allow residents in Chua Chu Kang GRC to get to the rail network very quickly as six of the 24 new stations are located in the area. The Jurong Region Line is slated to open in three stages from 2027 to 2029.
He added that he is fairly confident that autonomous vehicles offering short shuttle services will be deployed over the next five years, ferrying residents to nearby places such as the community centre, food centres and transport nodes. THE STRAITS TIMES
