More commuters satisfied with public transport in 2015: LTA

SINGAPORE -Are you satisfied with public transport services in Singapore?

A survey by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) revealed that commuter satisfaction with public transport services in Singapore continued to improve last year, despite the massive breakdown on the North-South and East-West MRT Lines last July.

According to LTA's Public Transport Customer Satisfaction Survey for 2015 released on Wednesday (Mar 9), 91.8 per cent of commuters reported being satisfied with public transport last year.

This represents a slight 0.5 per cent increase from the 91.3 per cent who were satisfied in 2014.

Satisfaction levels with public transport were calculated based on eight service attributes: safety and security, waiting times, reliability, service information, station accessibility, comfort, travel time, customer service and safety.

Bus service satisfaction improved for the third straight year, rising to 90.7 per cent last year from 90.2 per cent the year before.

Waiting time registered the most significant improvement for bus services, with 72.4 per cent saying they were satisfied as compared to just 61.8 per cent in 2014.

LTA said the improved results were likely due to buses injected into the public bus network as part of the Bus Service Enhancement Programme (BSEP). Transport operators SBS Transit and SMRT have also deployed higher capacity buses or added more trips on routes with heavy loads.

Meanwhile, overall satisfaction with train services also saw a slight improvement to 93.2 per cent in 2015 from 92.8 per cent the year before.

Wait times (up 3.9%) and service information (3.7%) saw the biggest improvements from 2014.

However, customers remained less satisfied with reliability and comfort, which only managed to score 83.7 per cent and 78.9 per cent respectively.

"These improvements were likely due to the addition of new trains to the North East Line and Circle Line in 2015, which improved train frequencies and shortened wait times," LTA said, adding that the completion of North-South Line sleeper replacement works also enabled commuters to have a smoother and faster journey.

On the whole, two out of three commuters (67%) surveyed said that they perceived the overall quality of service of the public transport system to have improved from a year ago.

seanyap@sph.com.sg