Under the current framework (and it has been so in the past),
the individual bus companies submit proposals for route changes
(intorduction, amendments, extensions or withdrawls) to Public
Transport Council, whose members (SBST, TIBS, TransitLink and PTC
Council) discuss and decide if it should be implemented. but many
many years ago whenever there are route changes, they are announced
by TransitLink so they have the old "blue sky white plate" design
used in current rationalisation exercises (try remembering) whereas
now they are announced by the individual companies since it gives
them flexibility on the annoucement and introduction of changes
after their proposals have been accepted by all the parties.
it is actually SBS Transit who decides what it wanted to do with
its services due to NEL and submit to PTC, awaiting approval. but
for network rationalisation purposes, it serves more purpose for
TransitLink, who am supposedly having the task of intergrating the
different companies' transport services, to have announcements for
network rationalisation done under its banner. the route changes
have been decided by SBS Transit, not TransitLink.
the original idea actually was to have SBST 133 divert to Serangoon
Central to bring connections to Serangoon Station since it is
duplicating SBST 135 at Serangoon Avenue 3 from Lor Chuan
(Serangoon Avenue 3) to Upp S'goon Rd (Braddell Rd) and the area
Serangoon Avenue 3 is just a small HDB estate to SBS Transit. but
they dropped the idea after it has been decided that they could do
away with the changes since SBST 133 still interchanges with NEL at
Potong Pasir and Boon Keng and affect less people. it is thus
actually similar to the Phase I rationalisations but they actually
needed more time to think about this as Phase I services mostly
skip only one bus stop due to the rationalisation while they will
have to skip a whole estate here. and considering SBST 133 is doing
well on its own and popular with the Serangoon Avenue 3 estate
residents they might as well keep it. also, there are a lot of
students who travel from Ang Mo Kio to Nanyang Junior College and
Zhonghua Secondary School in the vicinity in the morning and they
can't possibly move all the demand to SBST 135, who together with
SBST 135A, runs at full capacity in the morning from Ang Mo Kio
Interchange to Serangoon Avenue 3 even with three-to-five-minute
intervals aggregate. also, remember their revenues from bus
division dropped due to rationalisations so they can't afford to
rationalise somemore due to NEL 'cause it's like shooting at their
own feet.
as for SBST 147, i don't know about it, but i suppose it could be
cut short to Clementi - Marina Centre or Clementi - Serangoon, but
they decided to just keep it first since Marina Centre is too
crowded there. As for Serangoon, it does not have high demand
actually to jusitfy it anyway and there might be too many services
terminating at Serangoon for its good. Also, as in SBST 133's case,
SBST 147 is doing well on its own right so they might as well keep
it. they are starting to learn that NEL will have to complement to
a greater degree of its bus services rather than having bus
services complement to a large degree the NEL to keep revenues
coming in. they are just putting themselves in good light by saying
that they are reducing the number of passengers affected following
the complaints by the north-east residents. to them, it is a
win-win situation for keeping SBST 133 and 147.
SBS Transit has become more cautious now and not resorting to big
changes to its services that remove original links that have been
serving the area before NEL hence service 82 is kept. this way they
wouldn't incur the wrath of the residents. u can't say keeping both
SBST 82 and 107 is a stupid decision even if it is not efficient in
the allocation of resources. but if they withdraw SBST 82 due to,
supposedly, low demand a few months after this, they can do so
justified and making themselves a more caring transport operator.
thus in this exercise, they are not exactly considering the whole
area but jus fiddling with individual services. as for SBST 107, it
is not following SBST 82's route from Serangoon to Punggol as they
do not want to create another Punggol to town service that wastes
resources yet at the same time they want more demand catchment for
their SBST 107, which is currently scrapping through due to its
low-to-medium-demand since Serangoon and Potong Pasir are not very
populated. thus they decided to extend it to Hougang to get more
people to take it. realise they are not forcing people to only take
trains now but leaving buses running for medium distances along the
NEL but definitely not keeping those that runs like the full length
of NEL except perhaps a couple, like SBST 80 (Sengkang -
HarbourFront), possibly also because it is doing well and it is not
exactly duplicating NEL as it travels to Aljunied also.
the most clever decision is, of course, to merge SBST 103, 378 and
379 as it truely removes duplication and makes more efficient use
of resources.