Hi mr orange28,
1st between 103 and 117. 103 to terminate at yishun and 117 to
terminate at sembawang. 103 comes from Serangoon which is much
further. So to terminate at yishun is more appropriate. 117 comes
from much nearer Punggol and to just terminate at yishun will
further decrease its loading. Distance becomes even shorter than
now. I have personally taken 117 many times and saw a fraction of
people boarding at khatib and yishun mrt bus stops heading for
sembawang. Once Canberra mrt opens on 2019, 117 will pick up more
people.
2nd between 85 and 117. See below.
85 picks up most of its loading from Punggol east and Sengkang
east and Sengkang mrt (bus stop outside compass one mall, hawker
centre) and Sengkang west bto flats and fetch these people to
khatib and yishun. It serves a huge portion of punggol-sengkang
catchment bringing them to north.
117 just takes the central portion of Punggol people straight
out to north Singapore without passing by many HDB flats. So its
purpose is to connect Punggol-seletar aerospace to khatib, yishun,
Canberra and sembawang HDB flats. It needs to serve a fuller
stretch of yishun ave 2, Canberra mrt and sembawang to pass by more
HDB flats instead of pre shortening the route to yishun and causing
117 loading to drop much more if only pass by so little flats.
Yes we should be discussing about 117 having even more potential
to extend upwards to woodlands or make 117 pass by more flats at
sembawang area after passing by sembawang mrt before turning into
sembawang interchange. To even talk about 117 cutback to yishun is
a bit too premature. Route may become too unsubtainable then. By
the way, sembawang mrt area has 962 service to connect to woodlands
which is a bit indirect. If 117 can be extended to woodlands via
woodlands ave 7, it will do wonders to its loading having served
more HDB flats along admiralty mrt and woodlands mrt. It also
bridges the gap between sembawang and woodlands. Cheers.
Thanks.
Hi dupdup77,
Thanks for your detailed reply, I'm not quite sure what you mean
by same old story but here's my response anyway:
Fundamentally I see svc 117 as being comprised of 3 distinct
sections:
In your post you have mentioned multiple times that it is the
first section that is likely to receive even more ridership in the
future. This I agree with. Though as I see it, the ridership
increase is unlikely to spread south of the route past Khatib MRT.
Which is why I am suggesting to detach this section of route 117
and attach it to either svcs 103 or 85.
The benefit to attaching it to svc 103 is that it results in
very little people being affected (i.e. only those travelling from
Punggol to points north of Yishun MRT are affected), while for svc
85 it would be that svc 85 already has a (almost?) full DD fleet so
it's already well suited to handle the additional demand in the
future.
Specifically on your comments:
On your suggestion to extend svc 117 past Sembawang, my thoughts
are that Sembawang - Woodlands is relatively well served by the MRT
and svcs 858 and 962 (and 859 does a good job in connecting almost
everyone in Sembawang to the MRT) so I don't see the need for an
extra service, which would probably cannibalize existing demand
anyway.
Once again, thanks for your detailed reply, it's much better to
be able to engage in discussions rather than to simply dismiss
other people. (Thanks SMB128B, yeah that was probably the more
appropriate word!)