SINGAPORE’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) says it is set to phase out the sale of standard paper tickets for its metro and light rail services from January 1 after use fell to less than one in a thousand single or return journeys.
The phase out will take place from January to March, beginning with the Thomson-East Coast and Downtown lines, which have the lowest level of standard ticket purchases.
LTA says it will work with partners to communicate the changes to senior citizens, people on low incomes and migrant workers to encourage them to switch to stored value smartcards or account-based ticketing. LTA has also reduced the minimum cash top-up for stored value cards to $S 2 ($US 1.47) from $S 10 for adults or $S 5 for student or concession cards.
LTA introduced account-based ticketing in 2019 to enable the use of contactless bank cards, mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay or Samsung Pay, and account-based EZ-Link cards, to enter its public transport system and to pay for travel. The cost of travel is significantly cheaper using these options; a 3.2km trip costs $S 1.70 when using standard tickets compared with $S 0.92 with a smartcard or contactless bank card.
