SIGIR 08 - Singapore traveller

In an earlier post by Min, it was mentioned that taxi fares in Singapore are relatively inexpensive when compared to those of European and American countries. However, taxi fares are much more expensive than bus or train fares, especially if you are traveling alone. For example, a taxi trip may cost about S$15, or even more if you hit the peak period surcharge, but the same trip made by a train ride followed by a bus ride is very likely to cost less than S$3. Hence, it is no surprise that the majority of Singaporeans choose to make their daily commute to school or work by buses or trains, especially in view of the recent hike in taxi fares. This post mainly talks about how you go about paying your fares if you choose to travel by buses or trains.

The system of paying bus or train fares in Singapore is designed to be very efficient for the masses, but it does make it slightly awkward for the visitor who makes only a very limited number of rides on our transportation system. For buses, the system should be familiar to most people - you can pay your bus fare by cash when boarding the bus, but you need to prepare the exact amount since no change is given. However, things are slightly different for trains, because all fare gates at train systems are operated using contactless cards. To travel by train paying in cash, first go to a ticketing machine and pay the train fare plus a S$1 deposit, and you will be issued a contactless card. Then you tap your card at the fare gates to go to the platforms. A common mistake is to tap at the screen itself, when you are supposed to tap your card on the sensor below the screen. Upon reaching your destination station, tap your way out of the fare gates. The final step is to go to one of the ticketing machines, insert the contactless card and you will be refunded your S$1 deposit. The whole process is a bit cumbersome, but the good thing about Singapore’s train system is that when transferring from one line to another, there is no need to pass through fare gates at all even if the two lines belongs to different companies.

All the above explanation is made for the visitor who is expected to make only a very limited number of trips on our buss or trains. For us Singaporeans, what we do is that we simply buy a stored-value contactless card, more commonly known as the EZ-Link card, and then we simply tap in and tap out on buses and trains. We only need to top-up our card when its stored value runs low, which is very convenient and efficient. An interesting side-effect of the convenience is that most of us are unable to recall the exact fare even our most routine commutes, since the fares are automatically deducted from the stored-value card. To encourage the use of the EZ-Link card, it is cheaper to pay bus or train fares by EZ-Link card instead of paying by cash, and EZ-Link card holders get a rebate of 25 cents each time when making a bus or train transfer. However, purchasing an adult EZ-Link card comes with a non-refundable card cost of S$5. Therefore, I do not advise visitors who intend to use the Singapore public transport for only a few times to buy the EZ-Link card, because the savings is not worth the card cost.

Posted on April 24th, 2008 by Yee Fan
Filed under: singapore, transport