Photo: Reddot Wire newsroom (illustrative demo image)
A new direct bus from Punggol to the CBD starts a six-month trial — and the queue at 7.40am is already a verdict
Commuters have asked for a one-seat ride into town for years. The trial service answers that, mostly, but the morning crowd suggests demand will outrun the timetable.
For residents in the north-east, the daily calculus has long been the same: a feeder bus, a train, an interchange, and a stand the whole way if you board after 7.30am. The new direct service is meant to collapse that into a single ride from a handful of Punggol stops straight to the financial district, and on its first weekday the early buses filled before they had left the estate.
Riders we spoke to were warm but realistic. The convenience is obvious — a seat, a coffee, and time to answer email instead of changing platforms — but several worried that the trial frequency would not survive contact with a full week of demand. A few asked the obvious question of any trial: what happens to the route if the numbers are good but the operating cost is high.
The transport authority is framing the six months as exactly the test it sounds like, with ridership and punctuality data deciding whether the service stays, scales or folds back into the existing network. For now, the verdict is being written one full bus at a time.
