When is the next bus coming?

Because of a lack of bus time tables and route schedules, people are shunning public transport and choking the highways with cars.

PETALING JAYA: Getting around town by bus is extremely difficult with service timetables sorely lacking, a government study concluded.

According to a draft version of the Greater Klang Valley/Kuala Lumpur Public Transport Master Plan, bus service information was “non-existent”, leading to a negative perception of public transport.

“The publication of conventional bus service timetables with departure times and intermediate timing points is virtually non-existent across the region. Where information is provided at bus stops, it is rarely adhered to.”

“The information is often outdated or its quality is insufficient for the users to have any level of confidence to use in determining travel options,” the draft said.

(The draft was prepared by the Land Public Transport Commission [SPAD] and released to the public on Nov 13.)

It also said that this lack of information was a reminder that city bus services were not consistent or did not operate within licence requirements.

RapidKL’s bus services, the draft said, was also the only transport company that was actually putting information about its schedules online.

But this lack of schedule availability was not appealing to the general public, the study added.

“In studies which have focused on the quality and availability of public transport information, inadequate and inaccurate information has shown to have a demonstrably negative effect, on both the perception of bus services and on ridership levels,” it said.

Outdated and defaced

The draft’s revelations come as no surprise. A quick gander across town shows many of the Klang Valley’s 4,200 bus stops without proper information.

RapidKL’s route information on many bus stands was outdated (some last updated in 2006) and found to be defaced by loan shark advertisements.

Not even major public transport interchanges were exempt from this dearth of bus schedules.

KL Sentral – one of the region’s most heavily travelled stations – did not have any signboards telling RapidKL patrons where their buses would go to, or when they had come.

Only one official-looking signboard telling U82 route-users was set up. Another sign informing U83 users nearby appeared to have been hastily printed out, with “U83″ written down in black on it.

There was also no sign with schedule information in sight.

Association for the Improvement of Mass Transit (Transit) chairman Muhammad Zulkarnain Hamzah said that it was up to SPAD to “classify and number” bus route information.

Quoting Section 34 of the Land Public Transport Act 2010, he said that SPAD “may publish a list of the routes”.

Unreliable service

“The fact is that we don’t even have an integrated bus information brochure, a guidebook of the Klang Valley produced by any authorities, whether it is municipal, state or federal,” he said.

Zulkarnain also pointed out that public transport sites such as Google Transit had information on cities such as Amsterdam, Montreal and even Singapore, but not Kuala Lumpur.

His colleague and Transit adviser Moaz Yusuf Ahmad said that more people would use public transport if the information was available.

“Knowing when the bus or train will arrive allows people to make choices: use public transport or not, run errands while waiting, start reading… That gives them more control over their time,” he said.

Moaz added that local maps of bus routes “in a proper geographic format” were also very important as they would encourage local use of public transport.

However, he said that there was no point in having information if the bus service itself was not reliable.

“There is no value in having the information if (bus service) itself is not reliable. For example, having GPS tracking on buses when they are stuck in traffic or regularly delayed,” Moaz said.