Notes from Singapore, a transit mecca
Low fares, seamless integration, and expensive driving promote massive transit use
Singapore is a transit mecca that both exemplifies well-known transit best practices and challenges oft-held assumptions of how transit ‘should’ work. As I’ve been taking transit in the city-state of 5.5 million over the past week (while visiting family who live in Singapore), I’ve found a lot to be inspired by. Of course I am aware that Singapore and cities in California have many differences - but now more than ever California needs to be looking abroad at successful practices in other parts of the world as we seek to transform transit. Singapore offers plenty of lessons.
Fares are fair, easy to pay, and cheap
I’ve been taking mostly buses everywhere, and one of the first things you notice is the fare payment - you tap on *and* tap off on buses as well as on the metro system.
This is because Singapore has a distance-based fare structure for all modes of transit, where what you pay is proportional to how far you go. More importantly, the fares are very low relative to the cost of living in Singapore, one of the world’s most expensive cities. A short trip of less than 3.2 km (2 miles) is only S$1.09 (83 US cents); the most expensive fare is S$2.97 for 40km+ trips. (US$2.25). Riders are incentivized to remember to always tap off because if they don’t, they get charged the maximum fare.
Transfers are free between all modes - MRT (metro), LRT, and buses - so riders are charged the same no matter what combination of modes they use, or how many transfers they make.
While having to tap and off of a local bus may seem onerous – in the Bay Area, it’s only done on regional services like Golden Gate Transit, but not on local buses like Muni or AC Transit – after observing Singapore, I think it might be worth considering on local transit as a means for providing lower fares for very short trips. Tapping off of a bus seems like a pretty small inconvenience for riders if the benefit is that short local trips end up being less than $1 per trip!
Many payment options are available, but as a visitor, I really appreciate being able to use my credit card to simply tap on and tap off each time I ride. Singapore’s use of open payments for transit has meant that I haven’t had to fiddle with a ticket machine since arriving, and I don’t plan to.
A monthly pass for the whole transit system is available for S$128 per month, or about US$100, and discounts are available for seniors, students, and people with disabilities. And even with such inexpensive fares, transit fare revenue makes up a huge amount of operations costs – the system overall has about 70% farebox recovery rate.
Seamless integration of bus and metro service, even with multiple operators
As in many high-ridership regions, Singapore’s bus and metro service are planned and organized as one system, with seamless transfers between modes and integrated stations. Singapore is also ambitiously extending its Mass Rapid Transit rail system (MRT), guided by a clear long term vision for transit access. It’s Land Transport Master Plan has set the following goals to be achieved by 2030:
8 out of 10 households will live within a ten minute walk of an MRT station
85% of mass public transit journeys under 20 kilometers can be be completed within 60 minutes
75% of all journeys during peak hours are on public transport.
The country is well on its way to achieving its vision, with new MRT stations opening every year. Buses, which make up more than half of all transit use, are highly integrated with the MRT stations, an important part of which means providing full weather protection for transferring passengers. Due to the climate, with monsoon rains every day for a big chunk of the year, weather protection is a must. Massive canopies are at every transit stop, enough space for dozens to wait. Benches, clear maps, consistent signs are at every one. As part of the country’s Walk2Ride programme, covered walkways are provided within 400m of all MRT stations and 200m of all bus interchanges and LRT stations. At major hubs, bus interchanges are built into the lower levels of shopping centers so that passengers don’t even need to go outside to transfer. The Land Transport Authority, the agency overseeing public transportation, often negotiates the building of these facilities with developers.
Singapore has multiple operators, and historically they have not always worked together seamlessly. Recent governance reforms have helped promote integration, bring new operators into the market, and provide clear standards for fares, wayfinding, branding, and service quality that ensure a high-quality, consistent experience for riders.
Since the 1970s, Singapore had a ‘duopoly’ of two major operators - SMRT & SBS, which each had long term franchises to operate different parts of the bus and MRT system in the country. In this “franchise system”, described in an excellent blog post by Paul Barter, companies were granted responsibility to plan and run transit in distinct sections of the city. SMRT and SBS were responsible for planning routes, and the revenue came from fares they were able to collect, with little public subsidy. Integration between the two operators was often not great - routes were often not aligned, and wayfinding from one system would often ignore the lines operated by the other operator. As in the Bay Area, the metro (MRT) system had a different brand from the buses.
Evolution of bus pole designs, transitioning from multiple operators to one unified identity (credit: Justin Zhuang).
In the 1990s, the newly created Land Transport Authority identified the goal of integrating the bus and rail systems into one seamless network, including a rebranding process to create one unified identity for the entire system. This evolution, as well as much more history, is well documented on Justin Zhuang’s blog.
However, the franchise model still left service planning up to individual operators, meaning routes were often not well integrated, and the experience for customers was often complicated. This changed in 2016 when the country shifted to a bus contracting model, whereby the Land Transport Authority shifted to an operational model that Barter calls ‘proactive planning with service contracts’. The Land Transport Authority now plans service levels for the entire network, taking full responsibility for fare revenue and risk. It issues a series of 14 ‘bus packages’ that private operators can bid upon to operate different parts of the bus network according to service, fare, and wayfinding standards. As a result of the change, SBS and SMRT have been joined by two new private operators, Tower Transit and Go Ahead Singapore, and these four companies run most transit services in Singapore. The outcomes of this shift have included higher wages for bus operators, reduced wait times, less crowding, and greater reliability. The country is transitioning to one unified brand for all buses, where the system identity predominates, and the operator brand is only visible as a small logo on the outside corner of each bus.
The Land Transport Authority’s gradual shift, evolving into a true network manager (or public transport authority) for all Singapore transit over the past decades has resulted in a more seamless network for riders, with greater coherence of the underlying network. Ridership grew steadily for the years leading up to the pandemic, and has now rebounded to over 95% of pre-pandemic levels.
Transit adapted to car-centric infrastructure
One unfortunate feature of Singapore (in my view) is its embrace of car-centric transportation infrastructure – high-speed expressways and wide, multi-lane arterials crisscross the entire island. In this way, its transportation system actually resembles much of suburban North America and is significantly different from much of Europe’s tight-knit walkable urbanism.
A common solution to prevent conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists, and motorized vehicles is to completely separate active transportation modes onto separate paths and grade-separated crossings, rather than to slow down traffic. Predictably, many pedestrians choose to dangerously jaywalk across busy arterials instead of using many of the pedestrian walkovers. While Singapore has a relatively low motor vehicle fatality rate on a per-capita basis (thanks to its low car ownership), it actually has a higher motor vehicle fatality rate on a per vehicle basis that is on par with the US - indicating significant room for improvements in road safety.
Bus pullout boxes (yellow “x”) ensure buses can pull back into traffic after pulling over.
Something to draw inspiration from, however, is how transit is nevertheless very well-adapted to this car-centric infrastructure. Buses can travel at high speeds if they are given appropriate transit priority over cars. This is very much the case in Singapore: dedicated bus lanes exist across the road network, bus pullouts are built into most arterial roads, and dedicated ‘no stopping boxes’ help ensure buses can pull back into traffic.
Supportive Land Uses and Expensive Driving
Finally, it’s impossible to explain Singapore's success in building transit ridership (reaching 7.6 million transit trips per day in 2019 for a population of 5.5 million, compared to the Bay Area’s 1.6 million transit trips for a population of over 7 million) without recognizing the role of dense, supportive land uses and policies that make driving expensive.
Ghim Moh HDB community in Singapore, designed with many amenities on site with limited vehicle access.
Despite its car-centric infrastructure, Singapore is very densely populated - the dominant form of housing is multi-story apartment buildings, usually oriented around major transit stations. 78% of Singaporeans live in “HDB” flats, which are named as such because they are planned and developed by the country’s Housing Development Board, for sale to Singaporeans with a subsidy for first-time buyers. HDBs aren’t just high density, but intentionally planned to be complete communities that are accessible without a vehicle, with most daily amenities available onsite.
HDB developments, which often include dozens of buildings grouped together into a community, usually have vibrant retail areas, playgrounds, and other facilities oriented around car-free pedestrian plazas and walkways, with weather-protected direct connections to public transit. Having visited several HDB retail areas – which are mostly open to the public – it is clear that these vibrant spaces are an integral part of community life in Singapore. They clearly differ from the North American and European ‘main street’ typology of urban vitality - and yet they work very well for the local context, especially given the hot and humid climate and need for protection from the elements.
Finally, driving is expensive in Singapore, thanks to numerous government policies. Car permit fees are now over S$100,000 (US$75,000) per vehicle. And even if you choose to own a car - which only a third of Singaporean households do - driving is made even more expensive due to Electronic Road Pricing (ERP), or congestion pricing. On busy roads in central parts of the city, drivers are charged a varying rate depending on the demand for that road and if congestion is worsening. Congestion pricing not only makes driving expensive but ensures that buses travel quickly and don’t get stuck in traffic.
In conclusion: Singapore succeeded by adapting the best ideas from other parts of the world
While it’s impossible to replicate the exact conditions of Singapore, there are plenty of good practices to borrow and apply. But perhaps the most important lesson to learn from Singapore is its culture of innovation - the importance of looking to other places for best practices, and adapting them to the local context. As a city-state that gained independence only in 1965, Singapore has had to do this out of necessity. Car-centric urbanism, unfortunately, was, for better or for worse, imported from the United States. Integrated distance based pricing for buses was already in place in Asian cities like in Seoul, Korea before it came to Singapore. The adoption of a concessions-based model for bus operations and the Land Transport Authority's evolution into a Public Transit Authority, or network manager, was reflective of reforms that were also underway across Europe and Australia. Much of its MRT system and wayfinding strongly resembles that of Hong Kong. Singapore really was a pioneer with congestion pricing, first implementing it in 1975 - and its success has led to cities like London and Stockholm (and hopefully soon, San Francisco), following suit.
California can certainly learn a lot from Singapore’s open attitude to importing policies and technologies from across the globe. Let’s hope that in 2024, with the kickoff of California’s Transit Transformation Task Force, the applicable lessons from Singapore and other Asian cities are seriously considered.