What's Wrong #14 - Long travelling time for a bus

Passengers find that a journey by bus takes a long time. It discourages them from taking the bus.

What's wrong?

Our bus has to stop at each bus stop every 400 meters.  A journey of 20 km will require the bus to stop at 50 bus stops. (I checked with service 163). Each stop will take an additional 1 minute for the bus to slow down, to wait for passengers to board and alight and to take off.

If the bus has to make many stops, it causes the journey to be jerky. It does not make good use of the dedicated bus lanes.

How to put it right

We can convert many of the bus services to be an express service that serves a limited number of major stops, e.g. every 2 km and to have feeder buses to serve the intermediate stops. A passenger can take a feeder bus to the next major stop and board an express service.

As the boarding and alighting is at the same stop, it should be quite convenient for the passenger to make this transfer. It is easier to transfer from a feeder bus to an express bus, compared to transfer to a MRT train.

Although the passenger has to wait for the feeder bus and the express bus and perhaps another feeder bus, the total travelling time should be reduced significantly using the new system.

As an experiment, we can transfer from of the buses that run a particular service to be an express service. For example, half of the buses that run service 163 (say) can be converted to 163E that will make a limited number of stops. 

Passengers can wait for the normal service 163 or take a feeder bus to the next major stop to take the express service 163E. We can gauge the preference of the public for this service.