Here, you’ll find all the posts of running series published. (Last update: 8 April 2024)
Breaking News/Current Affairs Series
The posts written in response to current affairs in the transport sphere. Now arranged from newest first.
- CAR feeder? (SBST-GetGo FMLM collaboration)
- Shameless! (Parliamentary Question on Service Levels on 65 and 228)
- A surprising admission (Service 146)
- Looking ahead into the future (TEL3 Rationalisation)
- 2023 BCM Tender Results (Jurong West, Bukit Merah II)
- 88 trains… or maybe 110? (Contract CR151 for CRL)
- Alstom Movia R151 — The Review (R151 Debut)
- Service 52 x 143M (误) (CRL Stage 2)
- In the event of a train disruption… (July 2022 TEL breakdown)
- Who is transit for? (Withdrawal of Night and Leisure Services)
- Newsflash Throwback: Do you really need that new service? (Feeder 801)
- A catalyst for catastrophe laid down (Downtown Line Stage 3 Rationalisation)
- The COVID-stricken bus industry – a few proposed measures (3Q 2021 BC chain infections)
- One is never enough (Bus Accident Streak, 2Q 2021)
- 祸不单行 (1Q 2021 breakdown streak)
- Who does what, again? (3-Door DD Buses on 334)
- Photo ops – really that worth it? (Dec 2020 MRT breakdown)
- Them bells o’ danger tolled on the ides of October (Oct 2020 MRT breakdown)
- Objections to BCM (2021 Sembawang-Yishun Package Tender)
- Feeder 114
- Trust, accountability, transparency (C651 Scrapping Cover-up)
- A few personal comments on the new Transport Minister (2020)
- A rational reason to vote Opposition (GE2020)
Back to the basics
Here’s the basic stuff about public transport everyone should be well aware of. These posts are recommended for those new to the field. Thank you to Jarrett Walker’s Human Transit site for the inspiration. It was also where I learnt the ropes of public transportation. Successor to the former Basics page of the website.
- Branching isn’t a good idea
- How your seat arrangement affects vehicle capacity
- Types of rail-rail interchanges
- Route types (Applies for every form of land transport, surprise!)
- What goes into your travel time?
- Feeders
- Coming Soon! (Spoiler: Network types)
Fixing Stuff
Every STC post that’s aimed at correcting past mistakes in one place.
- Jurong East MRT station
- Sengkang/Punggol APM
- Chinatown Direct buses
- Bus 700
- Serangoon (and by extension, crowd problems in the North-East in general)
- An industry hit by COVID (and still screwed now)
- Cross-border transit
- East to northeast
- Jurong East and the greater JLD region, v2.0 to earlier Jurong East post
- Transit in Changi Airport
- The Circle Line
- Coming Soon! (Spoiler: Bukit Panjang APM / Jurong Region Line)
STC Reviews
From time to time, the Team goes down to check out (usually new) stuff on the ground, and see how they’re doing, based on end-user experience.
- TEL, marketing, and white elephants (TEL Stage 1)
- Thomson-East Coast Line: 2 years on (TEL Stage 2)
- Alstom Movia R151 – The Review (Title self-explanatory)
- Green, on two wheels (Bicycle Sharing)
- Coming Soon! (Spoiler: TEL Stage 3)
To-Do List
A list of things we could possibly do, to make transport in Singapore, just a lot better, especially for non-car users.
- Get more bendies (it’s the obvious choice)
- Future-proofing the bus network: automation
- Think about deployments and fleet choices
- What can we do with storage buses? (2021)
- Implement all-door boarding
- Change our tip-up seats!
- Stagger station escalators…
- More rapid-stop services?
- Improve information systems (and Plan B)
- Move bus depots back to the heartlands
- Prolong electric bus range
- Preserving our public transport history
Transit x Philosophy
Saying the bigger words and getting more philosophical about public transport management, because the software matters as much as the hardware.
- Silo culture – it needs to STOP. Now!
- Trust, accountability, transparency.
- Photo ops — really that worth it?
- Some Clarifications (STC’s mission statement)
- Let’s talk about standards
- Know what you measure
- Who is transit for?
- What are your priorities?
- Why it’s important to remain discontent (Also our 100th post)
- Always ask yourself: what’s not being told?
- Does everything need to be perfect? Maybe not.
Town-By-Town: The Series
Every town in Singapore, evaluated for public transport quality. How good is it to live in these towns? We answer that here. If you’re itching for your town to be featured sooner, feel free to pester us through the feedback form 🙂
- In Praise of Toa Payoh Feeders
- Hub-and-Spoke: Yishun the microcosm (among other Florida things)
- Punggol’s… Long-Term Planning?
- Sengkang. How to fix this crowd problem!?!
- Ang Mo Kio — are feeders a must for every town?
- Coming Soon! (Spoiler: “East side best side”)
Community Involvement
Posts that don’t exactly talk about transport itself, but instead the community interested in them. For they have their ugly side to rear at times too.
The LRT Trilogy
Sorry, should have named the series “APM” instead. Here’s the series for the faults of our “LRT” and how to make them better.
- LRT: Too light, not rail, not transit?
- Fixing the LRT: Sengkang/Punggol
- Coming Soon! (Spoiler – Fixing the LRT: Bukit Panjang)
Complexities of Jurong Series
The Jurong Region Line, a complicated mess. Let’s take it one step at a time.
- Pandemonium in Jurong
- So much steel and concrete…?
- Jurong Region Line: From LRT to MRT
- Y becomes T (Fixing Bahar Junction)
- Coming Soon! (Spoiler: The happy ending to JRL?)
International Series
It’s beneficial to learn from good (and bad) practices from around the world!
- Lessons from the Kowloon-Canton Railway
- In Soviet Russia, train rides you!
- Why are Japanese trains overcrowded?
- Good buses don’t have to be exclusive
- The cross-border connection
- Medium-capacity corridors and road-based rapid transit
- Macau’s LRT: a lost cause?
- Trams simply don’t work
- A return to the heartlands… (for our bus depots)
- Coming Soon! (Spoiler: How do you reorganise buses?)
Bus Rationalization: The Five-Part Series
Bus rationalisation (or, the new LTA term for it c. 2023: “optimisation”) is gaining traction among the ruling elites who pull the policy levers of public transport, and also increasingly popular in some circles. Well, here’s a case AGAINST it. The five-part series, on why your city shouldn’t do bus rationalisation in most cases.
- Bus Rationalization: SAY NO to it!
- Rail-intensive cities don’t need buses? Oh boy, you’re so wrong!
- Are expressway buses unrealistic?
- Bus rationalisation: a spiel against
- Coming Soon! (Spoiler: Another way forward for our buses?)
Transportational Austerity Trilogy
Austerity. One word to sum-up short-term fiscal planning, oriented towards making annual revenue reports look better, while casting untold long-term damage on the system. The full series explaining its damage on Singapore’s public transport system.
- Transportational Austerity: an intro
- Coming Soon! (Spoiler: Are we starving ourselves?)
The Bus Improvement Series
Answering the age-old question, of how our buses could be made better than they are today. There are just so many ways in which they could be supercharged and made better, so here’s the entire series. Work in progress.
- Are expressway buses unrealistic?
- Good buses don’t have to be exclusive
- Staggering isn’t exactly a good thing
- Coming Soon! (Spoiler: We’re doing bus infrastructure wrong)
Managing Standards
Using a series of strategies private, for-profit companies/organizations use to improve their user experience and service excellence, to applying it to our Public Transport and Active Mobility. Just because our transit does not make a profit, doesn’t warrant ignoring these points:
Thinking about Transit
A collection of musings on public transport operations over the years.
- Public transport for schools — it’s particularly annoying (Yet to return)
- MRT — rapid transit or commuter rail?
- Time to be realistic about travel times (20/45 from LTMP 2040)
- The COVID-proof case for 20-30-40
- Having many trains doesn’t mean cutting buses
- Better to have things both ways
- The problem with Singapore’s bus network
- Flattening the peak curve
- Chicken or egg?
- Some lessons never too late to be learned
- The capacity-frequency dilemma
- Trams are a no.
- Are we really spending wisely?
- Three Peaks Theory
- We don’t have to be perfect?
- Don’t worry about the farebox for newer lines
- How, and why, do we design our bus layouts?
- Thinking intercity in a city-state
The China Chronicles
I was in China for 22 days. Here’s the series of posts detailing my observations and thoughts of transit and urbanism there.
- A brief introduction to urban China (Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Xiamen)
- When a corporate campus is a model for urbanism (Huawei Ox Horn Campus, Dongguan)
- Walkable, car-lite commercial spaces
- The Chinese rail transit experience (Xiamen, Shenzhen)
- Urbanism in the countryside (Guizhou)
- Designing more accessible, and friendlier airport transit connections (Guangzhou Baiyun + Kunming Changshui)
- Coming soon! (Spoiler: The finale to it all!)
Year Reviews (+ Special Occasions)
Reviewing where STC has come at the end of every year. Posts marking special occasions are also included. These posts themselves are also useful troves with many links to other posts 🙂
- A National Day transport wishlist (ND 2020)
- A welcome to 2021 (2020 Year-End Review)
- 6 months, and a look ahead (STC’s 6th month anniversary)
- Hi 2022! (2021 Year-End Review)
- Two Years (STC’s 2nd anniversary)
- 2023, here we come! (2022 Year-End Review)
- 100 posts, and asking for more (STC’s 100th post!!)
- Happy birthday Singapore, and an outlook (ND 2023)
- Onward to 2024! (2023 Year-End Review)
Revolutionary Transit Series
Revolutionary new transit technologies being unveiled will be parked under this series. Though it has appeared to be quite quiet lately…
SG Transport Critic 