Sooner or later I believe SMRT would catch up and services will
improve. SBST has been operating DDs since 1970s so when it came to
fleet renewal they just bought new DDs and replaced quickly. For
SMRT case, they had been using articulated buses all the while
since late 1990s. But LTA had to cap the number of articulated
buses on the roads and so after certain time SMRT could only deploy
SDs to increase capacity. When it came to fleet renewal they
naturally looked at replacing articulated with articulated. This is
how I believe SMB388S first appeared.
But since LTA does not want town bound services to have so many
articulated buses, SMRT had to consider it options which took
pretty long. But atleast now they have purchased E500s and probably
looking to order MAN A95s. So yeah they might have been slow but i
believe they will catch up soon. And with them operating
articulated buses and DDs, I believe they will surpass SBST some
day if they maintain. IMO, they were just late bloomers.
Also IMO, if you going to put DD on service where 25% goes
up and 75% stays down on short route services, its a better option
to just keep to SDs and increase the number of buses. Just add 2
more SDs and increase the frequency - effective capacity is the
same and efficiency in terms of boarding and alighting will be
higher than deloying DDs. Faster travel time, Better frequency,
looks better also.
See the bolded part.
Please also consider for every 2 extra SDs you add
1. additional BCs
2. more operating costs
3. more parking space at already cramped interchanges
4. more road space occupied (imagine the higher traffic
volume)
It is wise and smart to rather deploy more DDs that is okay if
carried 90 pax (but takes care of the additional 20 pax that SD
cannot carry, even if upper deck only 25% full). In turn, you save
adding one more SD bus to the fleet and in turn all the costs and
points mentioned above.
