The importance of parallel bus services
I am grateful that crowds at Jurong East bus interchange on Tuesday night were patient (“Commuters outraged as main MRT lines crippled”; July 8).
In the course of waiting, it became apparent that bus service frequencies remained unadjusted. Feeder services such as 335, 78 and 105 left at the same timings.
Service 160, which travels to Woodlands past Bukit Batok and Choa Chu Kang, running parallel with the North-South rail line, and is hence an important alternative route, seemed to leave at the usual interval of 15-plus minutes.
After 9.30pm, service resumption on the East-West line brought more people to Jurong East. As a result, the queue for Service 160 required transport staff and the police to form a human chain to manage the surge. People waited for up to two hours to board this service, while other bus queues were shorter — and by 10pm, shorter compared with earlier.
Owing to the sudden shutdown, experienced drivers for Service 160 may have been in short supply. But this remains a valid area to look into: Identifying crucial parallel bus services to address how to transport people when these incidents happen.
