I do observe many passengers nowadays do pay attention to the
model of vehicle, just that they don't have the 'know-how' to
articulate their preferences. I'll say they appear to not care what
model quite simply because
they know for certain routes e.g. only certain models are allocated
to serve that route so choices can be limited to them & they
end up blindly taking what comes along !
But when you have a situation (like SJE & CW2) where much is
the same & only the models deployed differ, then i've
consistently observed that there's quite some people who would stay
behind & let others behind the queue board 1st & they
patiently wait for the next bus who turns out to be the preferred
model !
I myself of course also do that..as long as i'm not in too much
hurry & can wait a little more if i see e.g. the OH 1627 L
coming in a distance behind & just let the MAN go !
As the population living standards & individual material
expectations rises (which would also have to include the quality of
buses they use & by which the models tend to be quite an
accurate gauge as such !) i do believe a growing silent majority in
Singapore (maybe not yet in Malaysia) do pay attention to the bus
model they use, just that there may be limited avenues for them to
select which they prefer so they just put up with whatever that's
there only !
Similar observation in taxis, i note !!
I've seen (more than a few times) people who would ignore which
taxi is in front of a taxi queue & prefer to take their
prefered taxi behind the queue or another who just happen to drive
by ! Not every time you'll meet up with a preferred driver &
the vehicles are all air-conditioned nowadays (although many other
details differ which comes about from the differences in the
vehicle) so it boils down largely to the difference in model/make
of vehicle which causes the commutor to prefer 1 over
another.
As for driver's customer service quality, of course that's
important.
But from using public buses in Singapore for many years, i don't
find many drivers more outstanding than the rest so as a commutor,
the driver is just another 'item' like air-con whereby people take
air-con over non air-con etc.
Most drivers seem the 'same' & they should be as otherwise they
wouldn't have been hired if they don't make the grade to be driver
!
Talking about air-con, there's time (during night) where people can
actually prefer non air-con to aircon.
