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Students hold Facebook petition against revisions to shuttle bus system |
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By Florence Tang
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Aug. 19 2011 |
When second-year Philosophy and Political Science student Cheryl Ang created a petition on Facebook to increase the frequency of shuttle buses D1 and D2, she did not anticipate the positive response it would receive from the students and administration at the National University of Singapore.
In the span of a day, close to 3000 students had pledged their support, by clicking “I’m Attending” on the Facebook event page. The NUS administration had also took notice of the event, responding via the official NUS Facebook account that they were looking into possible solutions.
Ang created the Facebook petition Aug. 16 out of frustration at the internal shuttle bus system. “I was stuck waiting at Yusof Ishak house for twenty minutes for a D bus to come along to take me to university town. When one finally did come along, it was so jam-packed I think two people out of the whole bus stop were able to get on,” she said.
The opening of university town this August led to the revision of internal shuttle bus service D. Now, there are bus services D1 and D2, both of which make the additional loop at university town. Travelling in opposite directions, the buses also make stops at every bus stop between the science and business faculties.
Previously, the bus service D served only key locations from the business faculty to the science faculty, such as the central forum and university hall. As an express bus, it also offered shorter travel times to students rushing for consecutive lessons at different ends of the campus. The new changes to the service routes, however, have turned up other problems.
“Amending Service D to loop at U-Town has increased the travel time between Science and Arts, and also increased the turnaround time required for the same number of buses operating it,” fourth-year geography student Lau Kai Guan said.
While packed buses are the norm during term-time, the increased turnaround time means more people accumulate at bus stops. Thus, though buses arrive at scheduled intervals, the demand cannot be effectively met.
The general sentiment of discontent that this issue has raised among students is evident in the strong support given to the Facebook petition.
Some students also shared their opinions on the school transportation system and offered suggestions for improvement on the Facebook petition page.
Further responses on the Facebook page included calls for frequencies of all shuttle buses to be increased and suggestions for new express buses to be introduced.
About 12 hours after the petition was put online, a NUS Students’ Union representative posted that NUSSU had contacted the school administration regarding the issue. A link to an online feedback channel was provided to gather more specific feedback.
“We have also queried on the earliest date the school can respond with concrete implementation plans to improve the situation,” the representative wrote.
On Aug. 17, Sulaiman bin Salim, senior manager at the NUS Office of Estate and Development, responded on Facebook using the official NUS account to assure students that the department was taking action.
“We appreciate the feedback received on the frequency of our D1 and D2 shuttle services. We have in fact been closely monitoring the situation and are already working on resolving this issue as soon as possible,” he wrote.
A further enquiry found that advance planning had been carried out by the University to determine expected bus ridership in and out of university town.
In an official statement released Aug. 18, Sulaiman highlighted some changes that had already been implemented.
“After a quick review of the latest information (including feedback from staff and students), additional buses have been added to increase the frequency of D1 and D2 bus services from between six to eight minutes, to four to five minutes. More buses have also been arranged to ply the routes during the last 25 minutes of the peak time slots,” he said in the statement.
The prompt response of the administration indicates its recognition of social media as a feedback channel that should be taken seriously. While it will take some time for bus frequencies to achieve regularity, some noticed that there were already improvements in the shuttle bus situation.
“The buses were a lot less crowded today,” Madhumitha Ardhanari, a second-year Political Science student, said.
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