Public Transport Breakdown

Being a regular user of Singapore’s public buses, I have encountered some vehicle breakdowns while commuting on Singapore’s public buses. Therefore, when I usually travel on a bus that breaks down in the midst of my journey, I will usually try my best to ask the bus captain what assistance they would like me to help them on.

Picture taken from Google Wikipedia

On Friday, my assistance was again called upon, after the Service 851 (TIB 1147L) that I was travelling on broke down after the exit door of the bus was not able to close as one of the parts came loose. The bus captain was my friend, He had known me through my regular commuting of Service 851 from Marymount Road to Thomson Road since 4 years ago.

I could hear some passengers cursing and swearing at the bus driver and the faulty bus. It was not the fault of the bus driver that the bus broke down. In fact, the SMRT buses are better maintained than the SBS Transit buses as each bus is issued to a bus captain and the bus captain uses the bus until the bus is scrapped. If the bus captain  changes his bus service, the bus follows the bus captain to the service the bus captain goes, unlike SBS Transit buses, whose buses are driven by bus captains who uses the bus on a weekly basis or a trip basis.

I assisted my friend to tell all passengers to claim their refunds from Transitlink Office and guided them onto the next two buses on Service 851 that came along in about 7 mins after the bus breakdown.

I feel that one has to be more tolerant over this. Things do break down after a long period of usage. This is part and parcel of life.