Fellow blogger khaosd brought this to my attention.

Below is a screenshot of a zaobao article on 23 Sep 2010, several days ago.

The article is a 79 year-old man’s response to a reply by TransitLink about alighting from the front of the bus. He mentioned that just like many commuters, he doesn’t check his card when tapping out and thus he wouldn’t have noticed whether he is double-charged if he alights from the front when the validator is set to ‘Entry’ mode. He stated his wish that to make it convenient for commuters (especially for old folks) to alight also from the front door, the operators should improve the system.

I agree with the old man they need to do something about this. Old folks like my parents, who also do not know English, will have no freaking clue whether the validator at the entrance of the bus is in the right mode before tapping their cards!

It is often that TransitLink ‘tirelessly’ waste time and space on the papers to explain the reason why such things happen. It never seem to occur to them, or the fxxkwits in the PTC, that the system should be completely hassle free to commuters to ensure that there will be minimum delay when boarding and alighting. There should be no need for commuters to inform the bus captain or to check whether the validator at the front door is in the ‘right’ mode before alighting. The fact that the front door validators aren’t in a mode that can identify whether a commuter is alighting or boarding should not have been accepted into ‘production’ in the first place!

Frankly, it is not good enough to just explain the limitations of this stupid system time and again or to suggest ‘workarounds’ whereby a commuter will still be penalised in their haste. The fact that the ‘right’ mode on the validator is toggled by the bus captain reminds me of the frequent miscalculation of fares when the bus captain failed to update the stages in the past. (Even though they now claimed the fare stages are updated automatically, fare miscalculations still happened.)

That’s not mentioning that getting a refund for all these wrong fare calculations and deductions is tedious and time consuming to the commuter while it also costs money and time for TransitLink itself to process and issue the refund. Even if the requirement to allow alighting from the front was overlooked when the system was put in place, it is unacceptable all of these incidents did not trigger some form of problem management to find a long term solution. Then again, perhaps no one is looking into this because everyone was cracking their heads to create a bizarre, if not arcane, fare calculation system which no one can figure out how the so-called ‘distance- (and time-) based fares’ is calculated.

This has been an ongoing issue for as long as the EzLink ItchyLink card has been in operation. And this is among the list of many things that the ItchyLink card has been infamous for. Here is the reason why I called it ItchyLink because it is like an irritating itch that surfaces from time to time at different parts of the body which is hard to scratch.

First of all, Singapore reinvented the wheel to put this system in place when Hong Kong had the ‘Octopus’ already in place (which is a far greater and more widely used system). Then it was the ridiculous need for us to keep $3 in the card and put up deposits to obtain a card, citing the cost of manufacturing each card because people are buying more than one card. It was rather amazing they didn’t realise people will purchase more than one card or that some people sometimes lose their cards from the usage pattern of the old flimsy magnetic cards.

That’s not mentioning the need for commuters to place a $1 deposit to purchase a single trip ticket and the need for them to go to the ticketing machines to get their deposit back. All of these makes me feel that this is an absolutely World Class Crass system deliberately thought out in such a way to not just stop fare cheats, but to now make extra money out of it with not just the glitches but a fare system that benefits 66% of commuters in an alternate universe.

Anyway, there are at least two obviously (though hardly ingenious or intelligent) solutions to the problem of commuters alighting from the front. First of all, upgrade the crap system so that the validator automatically recognises a tapped card as entry or exit or look at the issue on why the bus are so packed that it requires commuters to exit from the front and not the back of the buses. Simply put, other than old folks who would have problems moving to the rear, it is often many of us find the need to alight from the front of the bus when it is packed. Obviously, Raymond Lemon Lim doesn’t take the bus often enough to ensure that not just the bus situation in Bukit Panjang (or just Bus Service 960) needs to be improved.

Perhaps, it is also high time to implement a flat rate concessionary fare (regardless of distance of the time of the day) for senior citizens so that they don’t get ‘punished’ by this ridiculous system. Whether they tapped wrongly, or whether they forget to tap really doesn’t mater when it is a flat rate. Stop giving us the bullshit that this is a cross-subsidy system that we have to pay more if this is going to happen. Come up with the bill and tell us how much more we will be expected to pay if this is going to be implemented, and let us decide if we want to all contribute to help the elderly among us. After all, we will be helping them today, so the future generations will be helping us when we grow old!