Let's put it this way:
Its no coincidence that SMRT has a lot a lot of problems.
Bus problem.
Train problem.
Back-up problem.
And perhaps even worse, PR also problem.
The corporate structure needs a major shake-up to change all of
that, but the govt has remained silent of this.
SBST has problems too. But SBST has the advantage of economies
of scale in the bus sector, and its NEL has been fairly reliable
and its PR is certainly much better than SMRT's.
And seriously, the bendies should just go. They take up space.
Plenty of them. If you look at SBST's purchases, they made much
more sense than TIBS (even after taking into account the
hodge-podge fleet caused by slow expansion). SBST rejected the
bendies for very good reasons (reasons people have raised time and
again here). TIBS decided to be different and SMRT is paying some
of the price.
SMRT could have moved aggressively to end the nonsense.
They didn't.
Worse. They went the opposite direction and concentated on
retail and advertising while the core businesses languished.
In many ways also, it is also the system that is at fault. The
govt has to keep mum about SMRT's CEO because it needs to build
confidence in investors about its promise of "free business
environment". Yet ironically, Singapore is not a free market with
little govt intervention. Far from it in fact. While this model has
its advantages, the bad stuff can be seen in crises like these and
you can see that the govt has its hands tied if it wants to carry
on this model which it clearly intends to.
The problem was that reject from Potong Pasir in the 1984 GE
decided to have more than 1 rail operator when such operations were
better a natural monopoly due to its specialised nature. Tibs was
in good hands back in the 1990s and it should have stayed that way.
Instead, they became part of SMRT Corp and had to endure
mismanagement.
