SINGAPORE – Adults will soon have to pay up to 50 cents more to use an express bus service, while concessionary groups will pay up to 24 cents more.
Passengers pay a premium on top of standard bus fares to ride express buses. The increase comprises an adjustment of up to 10 cents for basic adult card fares, as well as a 40-cent premium for express bus services.
For concessionary groups – seniors, students, people with disabilities and low-wage workers – the increase is made up of a basic fare adjustment of up to four cents and a 20-cent premium.
Those using cash will pay 60 cents more than they currently do for these express journeys.
The changes will take effect from Dec 27, said the Public Transport Council (PTC).
Express buses, including City Direct Services, reduce travel times from the heartland to the city areas and key employment centres.
Not affected by the larger fare increase for express buses are express feeder services, which were introduced from December 2024 to provide residents with faster access to town centres and key transport nodes such as MRT stations.
on Oct 14 following its annual fare review,
PTC said express bus services cost more to operate than standard bus services, and the adjustments would better reflect this and improve the financial sustainability of express services.
This is the first time that the fare gap between express and regular bus services is being revised since distance-based fares were introduced in 2010.
PTC chief executive Leow Yew Chin said the idea is to increase the fares of express bus services to better correspond with the costs to provide them.
“Hopefully, in doing so, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) will also have more room to introduce even more City Direct Services to benefit commuters,” he told reporters on Oct 14.
Mr Leow said the cost to operate such services is 1½ times more than a standard bus service, and the latest fare adjustment will help reduce the gap between costs and fare revenue.
He added that about 28,000 journeys are taken on express bus services, forming around 1 per cent of all daily bus journeys.
City Direct Services operate between major residential estates and the Central Business District during peak hours on weekdays, and are meant to serve as alternatives to existing public transport connections to the city centre. According to LTA’s MyTransport.SG app, there are 23 City Direct Services and 22 express services.
After factoring in the fare increase for standard bus services, the cost of taking a 10km express bus ride for an adult will go up from $2.37 to $2.86. A senior taking the same ride will pay $1.72, instead of $1.48.
PTC said that even after the increase, express bus fares will still be lower than those offered by privately operated premium bus services, which charge $4 to $5 per trip on average. There are 30 such services listed on the MyTransport.SG app.
Ms Sarah Mahalingam, 44, who uses an express bus daily to get to and from work in Promenade, said a smaller increase of 20 cents would be more reasonable.
Even so, the human resources and accounts executive, who lives in Sengkang, is resigned to the increase and will continue to use the service because the alternative is to spend an extra 30 minutes commuting by train, instead of 40 minutes in all with the express service.
Similarly, software engineer Siti Syuhadah, 32, said she would continue using an express bus to get from her workplace in downtown Singapore to her Sengkang home despite the fare increase.
“I will continue to take the (express) buses because… it is around 20 minutes faster,” she said.
Associate Professor Walter Theseira, a transport economist at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, said further thought should be given to the role of express bus services in the overall transport network.
This is because some of the services do relieve the load on crowded MRT lines, such as the North East Line, he said, wondering if such a significant surcharge to use express bus services is needed when commuters should be encouraged to use them.
