In a propaganda fake news published by the Public Transport Council (PTC), Singapore has the world’s second most affordable public transport in the world. The government study – unavailable publicly – was commissioned by government university Nanyang Technological University (NTU), using lopsided measurements ignoring the bottom 20% income earners. PTC claimed that the low income earners do not depend on public transport regularly:
“The benchmarking study measured fare affordability as the proportion of disposable household income spent on public transport by the second quintile household group – which is the income group just above the bottom 20 per cent who take public transport – in 2016. This is in line with PTC’s monitoring of fare affordability for this category, seen as the group most likely to depend on public transport regularly.”
Without giving absolute figures as a figurative example, the PTC claimed that the typical Singaporean spend only 4.8% of their income on public transport. The report does not regard taxi rides as public transport, and when factored*, should be 7.2% instead. With an index of 7.2, Singapore would be the most expensive city in the PTC study.
*Typical monthly transport fare including taxi fares would be about S$180 a month, instead of S$120 a month, on a typical take-home salary of S$2,500 a month – States Times Review’s estimate
PTC then added in their report claiming that the train business is more profitable elsewhere than in Singapore:
“In 2016, fare revenue per passenger kilometre in Singapore was S$0.11 for the entire public transport system. Hong Kong was second at S$0.14 and Sydney third at S$0.15. London was the highest at S$0.19, which meant for an average trip of 10km, Londoners paid at least S$0.80 more than commuters in Singapore.”
This fake news study claiming Singapore’s public transport is affordable comes ahead of a fare review by the PTC due next month. The PTC will be raising fare prices by 7.5%, according to a press release by Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan.