Picture a busy peak hour anywhere, with certain bus services having too few buses for a seemingly overwhelming amount of people. We probably have been in this situation many times before, being unable to board because commuters refuse to move to the empty pockets of space out of their convenience, blocking passengers still boarding from entering.

Sometimes, the situations can get seriously out-of-hand, I am affirmative we all have seen the video of a 190 commuter who needed to wait 14 buses before he could crowd on, he also commented somewhere that there were spaces at the back of the buses which commuters standing nearby refuse to move in to make way for new commuters, as well as the lack of intervention from the SMRT bus captains to encourage these inconsiderate folks to shimmy to the back!

Well, here is my take. Maybe, just maybe, there might be a way to encourage people to move to the rear, or upper deck, without requiring the bus captain to go berserk with his/her voice. It has all to do with things learnt in Psychology! Specifically, the mind of a Singaporean

To quote a Microeconomics class on how people only care about their self-interests:

• Humans are rational beings…which…

• Humans would always seek the best alternative in a set of possible choices i.e. individuals always choose the option that maximizes his/her rewards in terms of profits, outcomes, benefits etc. (In the Singapore public transport context, it is to have the most comfortable ride, with little/no concern over other commuters’ comfort.)

You don’t exactly need me to tell you at our core, we are quite the self-centered kind, with numerous internet fourms and articles of selfish Singaporeans bringing the maximizes his/her rewards to a wholly new level. This also means another thing, no amount of campaigning will work, if it “degrades” the QOL of oneself.

Now that we conclude Singaporeans are selfish, what can we do with it?

Thought experiment with RapidBus Sdn Bhd

Let us take a look at the interior layout of a typical Low-entry bus by our dear RapidKL/Penang/Kuantan, with a commuter’s comfort as the priority in mind.

Now make a guess: Which kind of seat do you think a passenger would want to sit on?

If you guessed the front, in order to avoid the full plastic Vogelshitze seats and at least have some fabric on your chairs, you are absolutely on point!

As such, whenever I took a Gemilang low-entry bus in KL/Penang (Because some SKSBuses, King Long and MAN buses in KL have the exact same bodywork as our SBST KUBs). I often seen these seats already occupied by passengers wayyyyyy before the Vogelshitzes have been filled up with people. This is a proper psychological mindset the LTA folks can exploit!

Solution 1: Put the fanciest chairs at the “hard to reach” areas:

To encourage people to move to the rear, why not we let the less accessible parts of buses have something better than just “more seats” or space available?

Let us take a typical double-decker bus, perhaps try to picture a route that is a considerable time away, but short enough that the obstacle course of going up and down the steepest of stairs feels unwarranted to the average commuter. In my case, would be taking long feeder 83 from my “roller coaster rip-off” station to the Kopitiam Square in Sengkang.

The short distance of this route of mine can put off people from ascending to the top floor to make way for others (83 mostly comprises of double-decker (DD) buses, the electric-DD Yutong in particular 83 has makes this case study all the more important with less lower deck space). What if? The seats on the upper deck are much more enticing to sit on? A la SG5999Z /Hong Kong quality seats? While also working hand-in-hand with maintaining the lower deck seats with the same generic Vogelsitze 750/3.

Why is this anti-crowding measure useful? ~Smart Alec commenter

With the final withdrawal of the majority of our bendy fleets, as well as the likelihood bendy buses in Singapore will go extinct after 2032. One of the very-often situations that can justify such an arrangement are double-decker buses serving as feeders (both in their name and trunks playing feeder roles). With buses experiencing severe overcrowding on their lower deck, and few people on top, in fact, let me name a few of such situations apart from the 169 RP case:

856: WITH/Marsiling MRT to Woodlands Train Checkpoint

Also in Woodlands, while sometimes occurring at WITH itself in the worst-case scenarios, but more often than not taking place at Marsiling. With TTS staff being deployed at Marsiling to people-push convince cross-border commuters to move to the upper deck, as the IVTT of the distance travelled is unjustifiable for passengers to go upstairs. TTS is unable to deploy bendy buses on 856 even if they want to, because 1. 858 needs them to prevent overloading, especially during the peak hours when airport staff need to go home. And 2. It is rumoured only SBST is permitted to drive bendy buses in the YITH premises because of some dumb BCM contract (I am being serious here! Otherwise where are the 857/859 bendy cameos?).

72/B: Yio Chu Kang – Territary institutes

In a similar vein to 169, but this time with 2 institutions worth of loading and maxed out 2-min deployments, you will see a DD rather often as Citaros are far from optimal for such short trips, resulting in a situation similar to the featured image shown.

Next case study: MRT stations

For those that frequently use Singapore’s cardinal MRT lines (NSEWL) and live on a station not near the start of the line, you may have noticed the first train car whizzing by you carry a few stragglers, and thought the train would be empty. But alas, it turns out the middle cars you were queuing for were hiding all the passengers standing in armpit-smelling distance. Why is this so?

2: All-door boarding!

It has been tried and tested on MRT stations that not staggering the elevators, stairs and escalators will result in crowded MRT cabins in the center cabins, and the extreme ends of the train carrying air. Singapore buses should similarly abuse this human mindset of putting minimal effort into commuting by allowing all-door boarding, especially on the lower capacity 3-door double decker buses. And of course, not stubbornly following our old ways of attempting to make all-door boarding a crime like Boris Johnson the buffoon, due to a few fare-evaders (Note to self, fare dodgers have more political power than the average UK dude ==|:-)…).

All door boarding does not just speed up the passenger exchange process, it also evenly distributes the crowd on the bus in occupying space on the bus, something I think the famous 190 commuter wished had happened, especially when bendy buses make up the bulk of 190’s fleet back in the good old days. The existence of the MRT proves that all-door boarding and alighting is what inherently makes our MRT faster, not because trains outnumber buses in terms of doors that LTA scholars just tell ST Engineering to add more doors.

Extra content! (Because it wouldn’t be a LemonNarc post without it)

3. Make a Gadgetbahn that gives minimal returns (Ignoring 3-door DDs): In the LTA Smart bus located all the way at the Hampshire stroad called LTA HQ, LTA is continuing to re-engineer the wheel with the “WTF” level of a bullshit machinery in attempting to improve passenger flow, in a collaboration with ST Engineering! I mean, a “Contactless payment system”, while nice on paper, is completely useless to SG given we can just pay with; our NFC phones! A lucrative place for a privacy breach just to speed up the paying process is another hint that the folks of LTA consist of staff that own cars and avoid public transportation.

A subscription and like to this article is a step to promote a car-lite SG!