Saturday, April 21, 2018

Hub and spoke system for public transport

I visited my brother in Central Coast, Australia a month ago.

The main town in Central Coast is Gosford. I took a train from Sydney to Gosford. The journey was 2 hours.

From Gosford, I saw the bus routes. There were local buses that serve the nearby towns. It operated like a hub and spoke system, similar to that adopted by airlines.

For airlines, you take a plane from a small airport to a hub. From there, you take an international flight to go to other cities.

I am in favor of a hub and spoke system for our bus services in Singapore. Many cities adopt this system because it is more efficient for the operators and for the passengers.

In Singapore, the hub can be the MRT stations and the bus interchanges. The spokes are the local buses to take passengers from the nearby areas.

If you live near a hub, you can walk there. If not, you can take a local bus to the hub. From there, you can take the MRT or express bus to a stop near my destination.

Under this concept, the express bus stops every 2 km (roughly five bus stops now). The travel time will be reduced considerably.

From the stop, you can walk to my final destination or take a local bus.

I like to see the bus system in Singapore changed as follows:

a) express buses and MRT will connect the hubs.
b) local buses will take pasengers from the nearby areas to the hubs.

Do you like this system?

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