Public satisfaction with MRT dips: PTC
The Oct 2017 tunnel flooding incident between Bishan and Braddell MRT stations hurt public satisfaction with train services. Photo: TODAY reader
SINGAPORE — The image of MRT services has taken another beating, with public satisfaction falling for the first time in three years, dragging down the overall satisfaction levels for public transport in Singapore.
Public satisfaction with MRT services declined from 96 per cent to 91.8 per cent last year, according to the annual Public Transport Customer Satisfaction Survey which was conducted in October last year.
Releasing the survey results on Tuesday (Feb 13), the Public Transport Council (PTC) said the drop, coming after three years of improvement, was largely driven by commuters giving MRT services lower scores in the areas of reliability, waiting time, comfort, travel time, and service information.
The mean satisfaction score for MRT services also saw a dip, down from 7.6 in 2016 to 7.5 last year, following last October’s tunnel flooding incident between Bishan and Braddell MRT stations, as well as the teething delays experienced by commuters from the testing of the new signalling system on the North-South Line from March last year.
The survey, which was carried out in October, involved a total of 5,007 commuters aged 15 years above, was conducted across 22 train stations and 25 bus stations and bus stops during peak and off-peak periods.
Respondent were asked to rank eight bus and MRT service attributes based on their latest journey on public transport – such as safety and security, waiting time, reliability, service information, bus interchange, bus stop, or MRT station accessibility, comfort, travel time and customer service.
To ensure better representativeness of the population, weighting adjustments were applied to the results collected.
The top three most important service attributes for MRT were ranked as safety and security, travel time, and reliability.
With the “teething issues from re-signalling largely resolved and the implementation of extended engineering hours for the North-South and East-West Lines since December to accelerate asset renewal and intensify maintenance work”, the PTC said commuters should experience more reliable train services soon.
Amid the overall drop in satisfaction levels for the MRT, the survey noted one positive finding — the improvement in scores for station accessibility.
The PTC noted that this could be due to the opening of 20 new stations on the Tuas West Extension and the Downtown Line 3 last year.
Despite that, there was an overall fall in commuters’ satisfaction with public transport here, down from 96.4 per cent in 2016 to 94.5 per cent last year.
However, the mean satisfaction score for public transport improved from 7.6 out of 10 in 2016 to 7.7 last year, which the PTC attributed to the “sustained improvements in ratings for bus services”.
Compared to the MRT, commuters were more satisfied with bus services, with satisfaction levels remaining at a high of 96.7 per cent in 2017.
At the same time, mean satisfaction score rose from 7.6 in 2016 to 7.9 last year, driven by higher ratings across all the aspects. This marks the fifth consecutive year of improvement in bus satisfaction ratings, said the report.
The PTC cited these findings to factors like the completion of the implementation of the five-year Bus Service Enhancement Programme (BSEP) last year, as well as the transition to the Bus Contracting Model in 2016, which included the full roll-out of the Bus Service Reliability Framework.
“Taken together, the findings suggest that commuters now enjoy more frequent and timelier bus arrivals, enhanced bus connectivity and more comfortable rides,” said the council.
SMRT's vice-president of Corporate Communications, Margaret Teo, said the transport operator is "committed to serving our commuters well".
"Commuter experience is a key priority for SMRT," said Ms Teo. "The shortened operational hours at selected MRT stations and the extension of rail engineering hours since December 2017 have given our engineering and maintenance teams much more time to carry out both extensive rail maintenance and rail renewal works along the North-South and East-West Lines.
"We have also recently introduced several new commuter-centric initiatives, including our enhanced SMRTConnect app, to provide near real-time information for better journey planning anytime, anywhere."
