Cap or freq?

Picture this scenario: You’re on your way somewhere, and part (or all) of that journey requires travelling along one of the really high-ridership bus routes, that stay consistently packed throughout the day. A key trunk route, perhaps. One with not a single double-decker bus.

Enter… 53, 110, 160, 170, 170X, 858, 950… the list goes on.

There’s a problem, however. Currently, the routes I mentioned run on fleets of mostly (if not entirely, except for 858, which we will talk about later…), A22s or Citaros. These buses are notoriously known for bad frequencies, since cross-border and Airport services can only run SDs in theory and practice. Unless you’re in a roblox game, that is (I’m looking at u Kimx). Anyway, the problem is that now, there’s no SDs with a nice standing place that would work.

Well…

The Yutong E12 and Scania K230UB is the last bus with a big standing area for commuters, but there are some issues. Firstly, the Yutong E12.

It’s an electric bus, and its not allowed in basements. For more context, take a look at this blog post.

Ho Seh, Xia Suay

HOWEVER, it, in theory allowed on the border, since Foton Electric buses are on Causeway Link services. However, it could be too difficult for SMRT to replace the A22s with E12s, especially since the A22 was nowhere near its retirement in 2022, and has still a few years back even today. Meanwhile, SBST did not, and still does operate the E12.

Moreover, SMRT operates a measly 3 E12s, so we can’t use that.

Now, the KUBs. They HAVE been operated by SBS Transit before on 160, 170 and 170X, but they are already too close to their retirement to be used, and was thus replaced by Citaros and A22s when the border reopened.

So… now how?

Citaros.

In this blog we rant, realise and reinvent. And it’s time to reinvent. Enter: the Citaro.

Refurbishment works in many ways. In most countries, redo everything. In Singapore, change seat colour. So why can’t we do more???

(seat hype incoming!!!)

Basics: Seat arrangement and capacity

Ah, the seat. The freaking seats. And now how to increase capacity.

Yeah, the main reason the Shitaros have pretty low capacity in relation to the Scania is because it uses the latitudinal seating THROUGHOUT the entire vehicle.

Whereas the Scania KUB uses a longitudinal seating at the front half (and for the Euro IV batches, 1 extra wheelchair bay) to create extra standing space. Remember folks, transit gets its high capacity from the standing space!

~ AMC, 2021

If y’all want more context, remember to check out that post, which got insanely popular…

So how would the Citaros work? Basically, redoing the seating. That’s it. That would immediately fix the cross-border seating issue. Plus, the Citaros are currently going through refurbishment, so that would be quite convenient. Although, you may ask, if the frequency is so bad, shouldn’t we increase it? And to that I say, the frequency isn’t bad. At all. It’s the causeway. There are too many traffic jams that buses can be delayed enough to bunch, so in this case frequency would not work.

On more popular occasions where many Singaporeans flock to Malaysia, these jams can stretch all the way to BKE, resulting in severe delays to cross-border services (not just 160/170/950!), and also affect Woodlands-bound services like 178,187,963 and 966. As such, these services are often diverted, if not experience infrequent bus spacing, which can spread all the way to Marine Parade (cue 966).

~ averagematcha, 2024

Then the airport. Which we have talked about before. It’s simple.

GET MORE BENDY BUSES!!!

Which I gotta say, they could.

There’s a problem, however. We can’t put them on 858. Remember the issue with electric buses and basements? I won’t say we should remove that restriction. Electric buses are surprisingly a new thing for Singapore, with only now we are mass deploying it. So how now?

In this scenario, we would have to do a fleet rearrangement, redelegating the SMRT A22s to Airport services, while replacing them with the new electric bendies.

We now have a bright future ahead of us, and we have nowhere to look but up. Let’s hope that our transport improves for the better from here!

Oh wait, I forgot to say about 858. Do you know that 858 can operate double deck buses? You probably do. That’s another solution we could use. For services which have high demand not just in their bottleneck destinations, such as the Airport and causeway, special departures and short-trip services exist.

• 858 (High demand until Aft/Bef Punggol Road)
• 53 (I don’t take 53 regularly, but I heard that the demand is really high.)
• 27A / 34A / 160A / etc. (why is fleet restricted by just the parent route?)

So I present three ways to fix these chokepoints known as the Airport and Causeway. Hopefully some of them can be implemented in the future, especially the second one!

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