SBS: Forced alight on expressway !!?
According to AsiaOne News:
She only wanted to go to Woodlands Regional Centre but an SBS Transit ticket inspector almost forced her off the bus. Another guy was not so fortunate – he was forced to alight along an expressway for underpaying his fare.
The incident happened on Oct 9 at around 11am, according to STOMP, a citizen-journalism website. The unnamed female passenger boarded bus Number 168 at Tampines Avenue 1 in the direction of Woodlands Regional Centre.
The unnamed female passenger told STOMP, “I paid the usual amount of $1.80 cash as I did not bring my EZ-Link card that day. A few stops later, an SBS ticket inspector boarded the bus and inspected the passengers’ tickets.
“He checked my ticket and there wasn’t anything wrong,” the woman noted.
However, the inspector later asked the woman and a male passenger in his 20s to alight the bus for under-payment of fares.
That was when she realised the amount on the issued ticket she was holding was only $1.70 and she apologised to the inspector for not checking the ticket beforehand since she had paid the correct amount.
“But the ticket officer was not satisfied and made a din incessantly”. To soothe matters, she told STOMP she tried to clarify the matter with the bus captain.
But the bus captain refused to listen to her and “took sides with the ticket officer”. However, she said the bus captain was careless in his duties too.
“When I put in the cash into the box earlier on, I needed to tap him on his shoulders to remind him about the ticket.”
The female passenger claimed that if he was not focused on his duties, how could he be sure that she underpaid?
At this point, she claimed that the ticket inspector and the male passenger also came down from the double-decker bus – they were still arguing about the underpayment. “At that time, we were on the expressway.
The ticket officer told the man in his twenties that he had to pay up the fine of $20 for underpayment.
The man in his twenties said that he would pay up and alight as well when the bus reaches the first stop at Woodlands Avenue 2.”
However, the ticket officer was adamant on the male passenger alighting immediately and instructed the bus captain to drop the passenger immediately - in the middle of an expressway.
Read the full article at AsiaOne News
- After getting so much flak from the bus riders…this sounds like a pay back revenge actions! This is totally unnecessary actions by the bus ticketing officer and the driver to force the passenger off the bus in the middle of an expressway.
It may be illegal even to stop in the expressway to let anyone off…this is totally irresponsible for the drivers to do so. This may means the driver may lose his jobs or get serious warnings from SBS if not it will not bring justice to the people who uses the bus services.
Problems Encountered.
- Coins fares are not calculated accurately by visual sights of bus driver
- Illegal stopping at expressway
- Rude Bus Drivers & Bus Ticketing Officer
- High up front penalty of $20
Suggested Solutions
- Use a bank used coin calculator or those used in the old jack pot machines to calculate the number of coins accurately. I believe those in the vending machines have more sophisticated yet simple to implement coin calculation programming.
- Any illegal stopping of bus in the middle of expressway should be immediately reported to a 24 hour bus feedback channel. If there are no such channel, LTA should give another bus license to another operator to compete on the same route with such feedback channel.
- Rude bus drivers should have a some kind of training on service quality and very likely a point system. All of them start from zero points and accumulate points for good quality feedback to get bonus at year end.
- The upfront charges of $20 may be exploited easily by corrupt bus ticketing officers, it should not be paid upfront at all but instead be given a summon and have to paid at bus at the interchange. I can easily imagine a bus ticketing officer swapping tickets of the passenger with a lower value one and force the passenger to pay up front whom may pay without asking or avoiding confrontation in public.
Latest development on this big embarrassment to SBS is that the driver who had force the passenger off the bus in the middle of the expressway is “disciplined severely” by SBS.
However, that may mean that SBS just give this driver a warning or scolding?
Well, we cannot do much for such case unless there is a proper official SBS feedback channel through either through phone, email or official website forum.
I like the idea of a youtube version of SBS feedback channel where the public can post videos of incidents such as this to the online portals to send to the SBS directors or bosses.
The good services may also be feedback in similar ways…where bus driver does great and should be rewarded with good bonus.
The economy is already very bad hence we should not ask for the driver resignation unless he did the same thing again.
The bus ticketing officer may be the cause of this issue hence we should identify more ways for the ticketing officer to handle fare cheats more gracefully instead of forcing passengers off the bus rudely.
