Investigating the perceived public transport service quality in Singapore

Abstract

Singapore is known as a land-scarce country with limited space for road capacity. Since the 1970s, the government has embarked on a mission to enhance connectivity through developing a comprehensive public transport infrastructure. After half a century, the government’s effort has been lauded for helping reduce car-reliance and subsequently traffic congestion. While not denying the country’s success, the downside of Singapore’s public transport system is that the travelling time by taking public transport has increased significantly from 2010 to 2020 while the travelling time for private transport users remained similar. This remains a problem especially considering ridership and the public transport network will continue to expand in the future. This project aims to investigate the factors of increasing commuting time in Singapore and examine commuters’ perspectives towards their travelling time through conducting surveys. The surveys are aimed to understand three main aspects: number of transfers, job-housing location and travelling time tolerance. Results indicate that perceived service quality of public transport is affected by a number of factors, and not the travelling time alone.