The reason to me is pretty clear - it has nothing to do with the
route... as 860 route can manage with DDs.
The reason is that before AMDEP became DD friendly, LTA already
upsized sv 860 fleet to 16 buses from a fleet of 07 buses last
year... so you can see 09 buses were added... With a frequency of
03-05 mins during peak hours, and 860 managing the load very
well... LTA now does not see immediate need to upgrade SD --> DD
when it has a lot more challenges with other SMRT trunk routes.
860 SDs in AM take around 50-60 pax these days because of
bunching... and PM is around 40-60 pax depending on bus arrival...
In general... 16 buses is too much for the route.
In future, I do expect some buses to be cut and converted to
DD... Also note that Ring road between ave 11 and ave 4 still has
lot of construction and new flats that will open.
By Q4 2016/Q1 2017... sv 860 will have a fleet of say 12 DDs, 4
SDs... similar to sv 291.
SMRT/LTA have too many A22 lah... that why they are spamming A22
on some services (in this case sv860) .. or else where the A22 will
go to?
further, if they really want to deploy DD on 860, they should
have keep it under WLDEP last year (when there is only 7 buses),
and deploy DD, instead of transferring it back tp AMDEP.