BUSES began having the right of way last Saturday when pulling out of bus bays on designated - usually congested - roads.
This, along with additional bus lanes and extended bus lane hours including full-day operation, assumes buses continue to deserve higher priority than other vehicular road users before an optimal balance is achieved.
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) has carried out surveys, made calculations and targeted thoroughfares for implementation.
Positive but anecdotal feedback from bus commuters indicates LTA may have hit the nail squarely on the head. Motorists' response has been accepting though not enthusiastic, which is expected.
The $130 fine for violations and strict enforcement by the Traffic Police should make the new rule of the road second nature to drivers in short order, as was the case with yellow box junctions and yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks.
Bus bay priority is gradually gaining as much acceptance as bus lanes in other cities. In Vancouver, for example, motorists will reprimand other motorists for not giving way to public buses moving off from stops.
The new and extended measures, however, should meet safety and practicality tests, especially in streets with many turns and signals.
Traffic conditions are too dynamic and variables too numerous for snapshot decisions. There are, for instance, competing methods to calculate "throughput", that is, the number of commuters a stretch of road can "move'' by bus or by car in any given duration. Even if there is agreement that a bus can carry more than 50 times the number of people a car can, account has to be taken of bus frequency.
It would be counter-productive to reserve a lane for buses on a road with bumper-to-bumper traffic if buses use it so infrequently that the lane is all but empty.
Yet, not setting aside a bus lane can itself lower the frequency of buses, because they will be caught in the jam.
Adding to the complexity, buses travel through streets with varying levels of congestion, making it difficult to determine their actual frequency at any one spot at any time of the day.
Monitoring must also bear in mind operational details concerning bus companies.
Will transport companies take advantage of time saved through bus lane and bus bay priority only to reduce trip frequency? This would neutralise any benefit to passengers while adding to motorists' inconvenience.
Only the "greater public good" principle - against overall energy, pollution and congestion costs - provides a reliable though extremely general guide.
