To be honest, after so many years, people are already used to
taking cross boarder buses at Jurong East Bus Interchange.
Besides, I don't think it's feasible to run cross boarder bus
services from Tuas Link MRT station.
Although there's a pair of bus stop next to Tuas Link MRT
station, and Tuas Checkpoint nearby, Tuas Bus Terminal is quite out
of the way.
Tuas Bus Terminal is in between Tuas Link MRT station and Tuas
Checkpoint.
From the bus terminal, the bus has to run south on the Tuas West
Drive towards Pioneer Road, and make a U-turn at the junction of
Tuas West Drive and Pioneer Road, before it pick up passengers at
the Tuas Link MRT station bus stop and run to Johor Bahru,
Malaysia, via the Tuas Second Link.
It would be like 170 making a U-turn after Kranji MRT station,
before running on the opposite direction towards Woodlands
Checkpoint and JB Sentral.
But the problem is, does the "Causeway Link" bus operator want
to do that.
If they don't mind, of course it's better, because mileage is
shorter, and the operator can cut cost and lower the bus fares for
the "Causeway Link" bus services.
Like you have said, having the "Causeway Link" use Tuas Bus
Terminal instead of Jurong East Bus Interchange would relieve the
load at Jurong East Bus Interchange.
Jurong East Bus Interchange has 44 parking lots and 21 public
bus services. If the ratio is 1 bus service to 2 parking lots,
technically there's space for one more public bus service. But as
we all know, there are many private bus services at Jurong East Bus
Interchange. Causeway Link alone has 3 bus services at Jurong East
Bus Interchange (CW3, CW4, CW4S). Jurong East Bus Interchange is
rather congested.
If Causeway Link can consolidate all of its 4 bus services
(including CW6 at Boon Lay) into one bus service between Tuas Link
MRT station and the Malaysia CIQ second link, actually that would
be a huge relief for Causeway Link.
Not only would mileage be reduced, it would enable Causeway Link
to provide the cross-boarder bus service at higher frequency, if
the same number of buses is used for the merged and shorter bus
service. Even if the number of buses is slightly reduced, it's also
better for the company as frequency can increase with equal or
lower cost of operation.
So, let's hope that Causeway Link would relocate its bus
services from Jurong East and Boon Lay to Tuas Link MRT station bus
stop.
Agree with you. But u shld consider this view too: Why did the
SG–KL HSR termius be Jurong East but not Tuas? Simply becoz JE is
more built up and developed with more amentities than in Tuas, even
though Tuas is so much more nearer to Malaysia to maintain better
schedules. (Sorry if this happen to be a poor analogy)
Coming back to the bus issue, my reasons for the relocations are
1. JE crowding, both the buses and people—there was one occasion
when Causeway Link screwed up their deployments and schedules the
queue ended up stretching up to like 3 berths away frm its berth
itself, vry vry chaotic!!! 2. The nature of the routes of the bus
that come by the 2nd link is vry vry long, simply becoz there are
not much developments near the checkpoint, and buses have to make
use of the Gelang Patah highway or smth to get to its destination.
Fyi CW4 entire route clocks abt 60 plus km in one direction (idk
how they operate the route), so in all shortening to Tuas shldnt be
a prob. Plus cfm got factory workers come frm Malaysia, so they can
make use of it better.
Btw, i got this feeling that CW4/6 may be pushed to Tuas, and
can we walk in/out of the Tuas checkpoint?