All Malaysia-Singapore VTL bus tickets in early Feb snapped up amid CNY rush

[SINGAPORE] All 6,480 tickets sold by bus operator Causeway Link under the Malaysia-Singapore land Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) were snapped up within hours on Monday (Jan 10), as people make plans to cross the border for the coming Chinese New Year.

The tickets for trips on the first six days of February, including the first day of Chinese New Year on Feb 1, were up for grabs at 10 am on Monday (Jan 10).

Tickets by Transtar Travel, which went on sale last week, were also snapped up. Causeway Link and Transtar Travel are the only two bus operators plying the route under the Malaysia-Singapore land VTL.

Singapore on Dec 22 last year suspended the sale of new VTL tickets for travel into the Republic or Malaysia until Jan 20, in view of the rising number of cases of infection globally due to the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

The authorities also temporarily halved quotas for the number of travellers allowed to cross the Causeway under the land VTL from Jan 21. They have yet to lift the measure.

A Causeway Link spokesman said more than half of the tickets for sale on Monday were sold within an hour. She added that the demand is high but the company is not allowed to release more tickets as stipulated by the government. A total of 1,080 tickets were available each day from Feb 1 to Feb 6.

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Customers on Facebook reported long waiting times, with some saying they encountered technical glitches such as having their bookings switched to the wrong route.

Among those still in line is Singapore Management University student Tan Ke Wei, 29, who hoped to snag a ticket from Johor Baru to Singapore on Feb 6 - when the Chinese New Year break ends.

The Malaysian, whose family lives in Kuala Lumpur, started queuing two hours before tickets went on sale. He said: "It would be good for Causeway Link to be more transparent by issuing queue numbers, which they did initially (for bookings in December).

"Bus operators could allow a full refund on cancellation of tickets because there are some people who panic-buy, which leads to these tickets being wasted when no one can use them. But they should also be careful not to allow buyers to sell their tickets as that would encourage reselling."

Tan added that he would have to miss his ticket scheduled on Jan 26 if he does not secure a return trip to make it back when school re-opens.

Meanwhile, Singapore bus company Transtar Travel, which is still selling VTL tickets for one particular day of travel across the Causeway every day, sold its daily supply of tickets for Feb 8 in about 80 minutes.

After trying for five days on the Transtar Travel website, Karmini (who goes by one name) managed to secure a ticket for her husband around 10 minutes after bookings opened.

It has been almost a year since the 34-year-old Malaysian has seen her husband, who works as a bus driver in Singapore, after they got married in Malaysia in March last year and spent a week together in March.

She said: "Booking tickets is like the hunger games. Now, I just have to buy a ticket for his journey back to Singapore. We are hoping that we can see each other every one or three months from now on."

Separately, Causeway Link said in a Facebook post on Monday that passengers were now allowed to amend their personal details on its website after booking the tickets. This change can be done once and can apply only to either the passenger's name or passport details.

THE STRAITS TIMES