With the cost of COE in Singapore not going down due to aggressive bidding wars started by Uber, lesser mortals like us are condemned to remain in public transport hell.

Actually, public transport is not that bad. Reliability of trains in Singapore has been a little down lately, but buses are good alternatives.

I love taking the buses. Other than the fact that you can randomly spot dreamy eye candies on the buses once in a while, or learn child-rearing tips from the uncles and aunties making alot of noise on the bus, these cool, little known hacks would make your next bus journey way, way better.

These cool hacks are based on the highly popular bus app SG BusLeh, which my team at Originally US put all our hearts and soul into over the past 1 year.

1. Check The Bus Timing First, Before You Go Suffer At The Bus-Stop

This goes without saying. Unless you are the luckiest man in the world, a big part of your typical bus journey is spent waiting at the bus-stop under the scorching hot sun. Waiting under the sun doesn’t make you a Descendant Of The Sun.

SG BusLeh displays up to 3 bus arrival timing instead of the usual two like other apps, so you can humji inside your house or office and check the bus timing in air-con comfort, and still get to the bus-stop in time for the next bus! Swee.

2. Know If Got Seat Or Not

The bars in the picture above shows you how full the buses are. If green bar, means likely still got seat! If orange, means maybe still got place to stand. If red bar… means good luck, maybe take Uber better.

SG BusLeh also can tell you how big the time gap is between the bus that just left, and upcoming bus, so you can make your own decision if the next bus is likely to have seats available. My butt has never been more thankful.

3. Stalk The Freaking Buses!

Bus arrival timings only tell half the story. Where exactly is that bus?

Never be trolled by bus arrival timing again!

With SG BusLeh, you can check out the exact location of upcoming buses. Even if the bus captain stop the bus at the roadside and go pang sai, or drive wrong road, you also will know!

More information means power. Power to a better bus journey!

4. Let Your Phone Do The Work

Actually, why you want to waste time looking at bus arrival timing? Your time should be better spent playing the latest mobile games or checking Facebook or Instagram.

So just set up a notification in the app, and let SG BusLeh watch the buses for you. SG BusLeh will then automatically tell you when the bus is coming!

No more stress of the watching the bus shoot by as you look up in agony from your mobile game at the bus-stop.

5. Everything Also Can Search

Trying to search for the right bus-stop is super agony. Many apps requires you to have perfect spelling or know the bus-stop number. Who the hell remembers the bus-stop number!? Unless you are some number obsessed freak, then you should better put your talents looking at Toto numbers and not bus-stop numbers.

SG BusLeh has magic search, with in Steve Job’s favourite pet phrase, “just works”. You want search shopping mall name, postal code, road name and bus number, everything also works. If you type wrongly, the app will try to figure out the correct spelling.

If the haze is here and you search for “PSI”, the app also tell you the PSI. Not just in three-hourly format, but hourly PSIs too!

6. Be Your Own Government And Name Your Own Bus-Stop

Sometimes, bus-stop names are like alien language. After we add bus-stops to favourites, we forget which bus-stop is which. But SG BusLeh gives you the ability to re-christen bus-stops to any name you want.

7. Your Watch Tells Time

You can tell bus arrival timing on Android smart watches. Enough said.

8. The Most Important Hack

Download SG BusLeh right now!

Don’t worry, no virus or anything. On Android, SG BusLeh is already ranked third among free transportation apps. Guess who got first and second place? Grab and Uber lah.

SG BusLeh is available on both Android and iOS.

Sharing is caring. Tell your friends about SG BusLeh too!

Featured image for this article is taken from http://www.futuregov.asia/ext/resources/photologue/photos/archives/s/si/Singapore_bus_crowd.jpg