More buses please.

Could we have more buses in Singapore, please? My thinking is that if I put it as a polite request, it is more likely to be listened to, than if I put it as a criticism. However, I must explain why we need more buses in Singapore.

If you have ever taken a bus quite early, in the morning, in Singapore...say 7.15, up to town, you would have noticed an interesting phenomenon: it is possible to squeeze a surprising number of people on a bus, if you don't care how comfortable they are. This morning, I was on one such bus. I was travelling earlier than usual and was unable to find a seat. Indeed, I found myself standing, alongside what seemed like most of the other people on the bus. It was most uncomfortable. At one point, in fact, the doors of the bus were having trouble closing, because there were simply too many people squeezed on the bus. It was only possible to close the doors after a little more shuffling and greater squeezing of the people deep in the interior of the bus. After that, the bus was completely full. It wasn't a fun journey.

Now, the number of buses on a route is not an immutable number. If there were a willingness to improve the lot of commuters, more buses could be put on the route. I would think that at least 50% more buses are needed in peak hours, on many routes, to save most people from an uncomfortable journey. Perhaps on some routes a doubling of bus numbers would be necessary.

The word "bus" is usually accompanied by the word "service". Now, if it is truly intended to provide a bus service, then scheduling more buses would seem the obvious thing to do. I shouldn't even have to be writing about it. However, if the intention is to maximize profit at the expense of the comfort of the passengers then the present situation is what the operators will choose to create: deliberately schedule too few buses to maximize the revenue per bus, by maximizing the "human packing" per bus.

If nothing is done to increase the numbers of buses (and their frequency) on routes in the morning, one can assume that maximum profit of this supposedly public service, is the goal. If, however, I find myself able to get a seat at 7.15 in the morning, I will understand that service is truly the goal of the bus service.

I hope for change for the better.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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