OPERATIONS REVIEW SINGAPORE Bus • Taxi • Rail • Automotive Engineering Services • Inspection & Testing Services Driving Centre • Car Rental & Leasing • Insurance Broking Services • Outdoor Advertising Revenue Total Investment Total Operating Total Number (S$’mil) (S$’mil) Fleet Size of Employees 2,229.8 388.5 22,035 11,379 double deck buses to 45 services. It added 112 more peak Bus hour trips per weekday to some of these services. In all, 80 ComfortDelGro Corporation Limited is the undisputed services were improved. market leader in both the public scheduled bus and private coach service sectors in Singapore. SBS Transit’s Intelligent Route Information System or iris app continued to rise in popularity. Besides making it available on 11 other smartphone apps, which were developed by private Public Scheduled Bus individuals and organisation, SBS Transit also broadened Our public-listed scheduled bus subsidiary, SBS Transit the app on new platforms such as the Blackberry 10 Ltd, operates a fleet of 3,326 buses and 255 bus services mobile device. During the year, the iris app and the other comprising 201 basic services, 31 premium services and smartphone apps collectively received an average of five 23 niche bus services. During the year, ridership increased million queries a day for the next bus arrival timings – an by 3.1% to 973.5 million passengers. increase of two million daily hits compared to 2012. To cater to rising demand and to improve comfort levels of bus journeys, 403 new buses were rolled out during the Private Bus Charter year. With these, SBS Transit’s entire fleet became fully air- The Group owns Singapore’s largest private bus chartering conditioned in September 2013. With an expanded fleet, company, ComfortDelGro Bus Pte Ltd, which operates a fleet the Land Transport Authority (LTA) offered a temporary of 350 buses, including buses belonging to sub-contractors. bus park in Changi which has a capacity for about 260 It offers a wide range of bus charter services, including buses. Buses that serve the Tampines Bus Interchange are employee and school bus services. It also offers overland parked at this facility. bus services to West Malaysia, and operates premium bus services, complementing those offered by SBS Transit. Buses rolled out under the Government’s Bus Service Enhancement Programme (BSEP) were put into service on In September 2013, ComfortDelGro Bus became the first five new routes and on 39 heavily-utilised services. On its private bus operator to clinch the City Direct bus service own, SBS Transit also added more buses and deployed licence to provide express bus service between Jurong 31 OPERATIONS REVIEW SINGAPORE West and the Central Business District (CBD) for two years under the LTA’s BSEP. Two months later, it won a Rail second tender to operate another City Direct bus service Demand for our rail services continued to remain strong in between Bukit Batok and Hillview to the CBD for two 2013 with more than 204.8 million passenger trips made. years, starting from January 2014. Both contracts are This represented an increase of 6.9% over the previous year. valued at a combined S$1.96 million. ComfortDelGro Bus was awarded a third contract in the first quarter of 2014 to Average daily ridership on the North East Line (NEL) grew operate one of five Peak Period Short Services operating by 6.1% to 481,000 while that of the two Light Rail Transit from Bedok MRT station to Chai Chee Drive for two years. (LRT) systems in Punggol and Sengkang increased by 11.5% to a daily average of 79,000. ComfortDelGro Bus also remained the preferred bus chartering provider for the National Day Parade, Singapore Phase One of the Downtown Line (DTL), Singapore’s fifth MRT Armed Forces Day, the Army Open House, the Singapore line with 34 stations, opened for revenue service in December F1 Grand Prix night races, as well as the Standard 2013. The fully automated, underground rail system operated Chartered Marathon. by SBS Transit recorded a ridership of 674,000 in the first 10 days of its service. By the end of January 2014, a daily TAxI average of 52,000 commuter rides was registered. Our taxi companies in Singapore, Comfort Transportation The first of the 18 new trains ordered for the NEL by the LTA Pte Ltd and CityCab Pte Ltd, continued to command the in 2012 is expected to be delivered in the second quarter lion’s share of the market with a combined fleet of about of 2014, while delivery for the remaining trains is scheduled 16,600 taxis. over the next two years. The new trains will have a more customer-centric interior and a better detrainment door The ComfortDelGro Taxi Booking app, which is available design. In preparation for the arrival of the new trains, the on all smartphone devices, registered a total of 2.13 million NEL depot at Sengkang has upgraded its various systems downloads in 2013. Taxi bookings made via the app including signalling and communications. Expansion of alone climbed to 13.3 million and accounted for about tracks to house these additional trains was completed earlier. 41% of all taxi bookings. The SMS-A-Taxi booking service also recorded an increase in taxi bookings to 3.8 million. Concurrently, the Sengkang and Punggol LRT systems These, together with the other data channel bookings are being upgraded to prepare for a two-car operation and Interactive Voice Response channels, translated into that is scheduled for implementation in 2016. All 16 cars 88% of total taxi bookings. Total taxi bookings for 2013 will be modified by August 2015, with another 16 new cars hit a record 32.5 million, an 8.3% increase from 2012. The ordered. In all, the LRT fleet will increase to 57. We expect number of taxi commuters opting for cashless payments to take delivery of the first car in March 2016. also increased with 15.7 million cashless transactions SBS Transit is also working with the LTA to enhance the made – 18% more than the previous year. signalling and the platform stopping control systems to In December 2013, ComfortDelGro Taxis began installing accommodate the two-car operation. Works are expected an extra “eye” in its taxis as an added safety and security to be completed by August 2016. measure. The in-vehicle camera is equipped with a 140° focus lens, a 2.7-inch LCD screen and special “low- Automotive Engineering Services lighting” recording functions. It serves to establish clearly Our automotive engineering services subsidiary, the liability during accidents, which will, in turn, quicken ComfortDelGro Engineering Pte Ltd, experienced an claims processes. Installation is expected to complete overall 2% growth, thanks to higher revenue from its across the entire fleet of taxis by early-2014. engineering business, namely taxi maintenance, crash ComfortDelGro Taxis remained committed to the repair business, parts sales as well as bus assembly. preservation of the environment and continued to add To cope with the increase in the number of taxis passing newer and greener vehicles to its growing fleet. During the through its servicing lanes, ComfortDelGro Engineering year, it rolled out 315 Euro 5 Hyundai i-40 taxis. With this reorganised its Loyang workshop and converted one of its addition, about 95% of its fleet are environmentally friendly. car care centres in Senoko into a taxi workshop. Together, Both taxi companies continued to do well to meet the these resulted in a 11% increase in the number of work LTA’s Quality of Service standards, as well as the Taxi bays. This immediately reduced the amount of wait-time for Availability standards. drivers by more than an hour. 32 ComfortDelGro Engineering successfully secured 12 new Motor insurance and road tax renewal, in-vehicle unit (IU) corporate contracts during the year, bringing the total maintenance, car evaluation, vehicle emission certification, number of external corporate accounts to 81. In addition to enforcement inspection, and accident vehicle assessment servicing external accounts, ComfortDelGro Engineering are some of the other services available to motorists who started providing maintenance for the vehicle fleet belonging call at its inspection centres. In all, 18,296 accident reports to VICOM Ltd and its subsidiary, Setsco Services Pte Ltd. were filed and 1,898 motorists had their vehicles repaired at approved workshops. VICOM also carried out 3,967 Several marketing and customer engagement events surveys on accident vehicles making insurance claims, organised during the year, including vehicle maintenance and entered into arrangements with NTUC Income and talks and roadshows, defensive driving courses and short ComfortDelGro’s Group Claims Unit for claims matters overseas driving trips. relating to ComfortDelGro taxis and SBS Transit buses. An IU management system, which removes the need ComfortDelGro Engineering’s crash repair unit, which for vehicle inspectors to manually fill up multiple forms, is also the accident reporting centre for 20 insurance was also rolled out during the year, resulting in a shorter companies, repaired 93 more accident vehicles in 2013 turnaround for IU services. after introducing a new programme to include the referral of accident vehicles. VICOM Emission Test Laboratory (VETL) experienced strong growth in the first half of the year as parallel Its vehicle assembly unit also delivered a total of 223 buses importers rushed to have their vehicles tested and to SBS Transit and completed the installation of ticketing certified before the LTA’s Carbon Emission-based Vehicle and bus location equipment, hand straps, interior and Scheme came into effect in July 2013. In all, VETL tested exterior stickers, as well as livery work on 200 Mercedes 294 vehicles in 2013, up from 91 previously. VICOM’s Benz Euro 5 Citaro buses.