More than 20 questions raised by multiple Members of Parliament (MPs) about the SimplyGo transition will be answered in the next Parliament sitting on Feb. 5, 2024.

25 questions raised

According to the latest order paper published, 25 questions, including those scheduled for oral reply and written reply, have been filed about SimplyGo and the country's public transport ticketing systems.

Many questions were based on SimplyGo's inability to display account balances efficiently, such as whether the Land Transport Authority (LTA) had tried to address the issue and why it felt not implementing the feature was a justifiable trade-off.

Other questions were raised about the additional S$40 million that the government will spend to continue using the current card-based ticketing system.

MPs also asked the Minister for Transport why LTA chose SimplyGo as the replacement for the current system.

Questions were also asked on LTA's plans for SimplyGo moving forward and how it plans to become more effective in receiving feedback from commuters.

Background

The LTA previously announced that non-SimplyGo EZ-Link cards and NETS FlashPay cards would no longer be valid payment modes for public transport fares from Jun. 1, 2024.

Instead, commuters were expected to adopt the use of SimplyGo, an account-based ticketing system.

However, LTA reversed the decision after the strong public reaction over SimplyGo's inability to display fares and account balances fast enough at fare gates and bus readers.

LTA pushed back the transition to a later unannounced date, allowing commuters to continue using the card-based ticketing system on public transport until at least 2030.

Minister for Transport Chee Hong Tat told the media on Jan. 26, 2024, that the initial decision to phase out legacy public transport cards was a "judgment error" and apologised to commuters.

He said the government had underestimated how much the public wants to retain features of the legacy system.

However, Chee noted that there is no solution to overcome the current technical difficulties for the SimplyGo system to display fares and account balances on public transport fare readers.

While LTA had conducted focus group discussions and trials with over 1,000 commuters, Chee said that if the government had "consulted more widely", it would have been able to "gather views from a wider group of commuters".

Chee said LTA has since also acted on feedback to improve the SimplyGo app's user experience and introduced improvements such as enabling the app to send users push notifications.

Other issues to be discussed in Parliament

Other issues that will be raised in Parliament include former transport minister S Iswaran's corruption charges.

Questions were also filed regarding a recent retrenchment exercise that an e-commerce company in Singapore conducted without informing the union that represented its workers.

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Top photos from Canva