Firstly, I am of the opinion that this got something to do with
the respective assembly rate of B9TLs and A95s. Given that Hougang
Bus Assembly had become familarised with the building of B9TLs,
it's unsurprising that they would have produced it at a fast rate,
having more than enough B9TLs that not even SBS Transit needs all
of them (especially when LTA bought 176 more B9TLs).
On the other hand, the Batch 3 A95s appeared to have a different
exterior design (I have not yet boarded the Batch 3s yet so I don't
know about the interior). Furthermore, the A95s aren't assembled in
Singapore unlike the B9TLs...for the former, it would definitely
takes much more time for them to come as compared to the latter.
Given that SMRT needs high capacity buses urgently, they just
simply assign all of them to SMRT for now...but whether this means
that they would do something to the A95s is still another question
to be left to another occasion though.
Now that it is clear that B9s would be to stay in SMRT fleet I
strongly advocate for LTA to throw in some SMRT fleets to SBST and
GA too.. Otherwise they aren't gonna be ready to deal w future bus
packages
