S’pore Bus Captain Shows How Coin Box Works, Says Driver Has To Manually Count Money

Bus Captain Shows How Coin Box Works, Says It Doesn’t Count Money Automatically

Bus captains have a long list of responsibilities aside from getting passengers safely from stop to stop.

But one little-known fact is that they are also lightning-quick calculators, as shown by a bus captain cum TikTok user, who recently explained how the bus’ coin box works.

Contrary to popular belief, he revealed that there are no automatic features in the coin box, and each time a passenger pays for a ride on the bus, the bus captin would have to count the money manually.

He added that he prefers if passengers deposited notes instead of coins since it makes their counting job easier.

Bus captain shows behind-the-scenes look at coin box interface

On Friday (12 Aug), resident bus captain and TikTok user @yourbuscaptain shared how the coin box inside each bus works.

He starts the one-minute clip by clarifying that these coin boxes don’t automatically count the money commuters insert in them each time they pay for a ride.

Giving viewers a behind-the-scenes look, he went on to point out the different buttons on the bus fare system interface.

The interface has different buttons for the different fare types, such as adult, elderly, or student.

Shows glass panel on coin box & how fares are calculated

Next, he pans the camera to the familiar yellow coin box by its side, which features a see-through panel.

He explains that the box isn’t anything fancy and has no technology that would automatically count the money.

Illustrating his point, he coughed up S$2.90 for the little experiment and dropped a two-dollar note in the box.

The two-dollar note then drops inside without much fanfare and is visibly seen through the panel.

He then shared that he prefers dollar notes and larger coin denominations as it’s easier for him to count the appropriate fare.

In comparison, he showed how it’d look if a commuter decide to insert coins of smaller denominations.

Naturally, he would have to count each coin to make sure it adds up to the correct fare. And this would take time, he explains.

Ending the video, he hopes commuters will take note of the information he shared and will “help” to make themselves and bus captains happy.

EZ-Link card is probably still the best

For so long, we have fumbled with our coin pouches to scrounge up the right fare amount without knowing that a note would do the trick.

However, the downside is that we’re probably not getting our change back.

No matter how you conjure up your fare, we doubt it’ll be as convenient as tapping in with an EZ-Link card.

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Featured image adapted from @yourbuscaptain on TikTok.