SINGAPORE - A Nanyang Technological University study commissioned by the Public Transport Council (PTC) has found that Singapore's public transport fares ranked second most affordable among 12 major cities.

The benchmarking study, published on Tuesday (Oct 23), measured fare affordability as the proportion of disposable household income spent on public transport by the second quintile household group - which is the income group just above the bottom 20 per cent who take public transport - in 2016.

This is in line with PTC's monitoring of fare affordability for this category, seen as the group most likely to depend on public transport regularly.

Singapore had an index score of 4.8, meaning that, on average, a typical family that uses public transport daily here spends about 4.8 per cent of its disposable income on public transport.

San Francisco topped the list with a score of 4.1. Public transport expenditure in the American city is 28 per cent higher than in Singapore but the disposable income is 48 per cent higher.

Another finding from the study was that in terms of fare revenue collected per passenger kilometre, Singapore was the lowest among Hong Kong, Sydney, Toronto, New York, San Francisco and London. These seven cities were used as the relevant data was available only from this group.

In 2016, fare revenue per passenger kilometre in Singapore was S$0.11 for the entire public transport system. Hong Kong was second at S$0.14 and Sydney third at S$0.15. London was the highest at S$0.19, which meant for an average trip of 10km, Londoners paid at least S$0.80 more than commuters in Singapore.