Where were you when 700 was kill
Can the news cycle just slow down and let me empty my drafts folder, for once?
The problem with complicated issues is that a lot of things are very closely intertwined. I didn’t initially plan to write about this so early given that I’ve some other articles on the topic in the draft queue, and thus those other pieces have to come out first in order for you to get the full picture. Although, I’ll try to provide as much information as I can to provide context, so this will be long. Very long.
The internet was once again up in flames about bus reroutes — namely the cancellation of bus service 700, removal of 171 from Bukit Timah Road, and sending 972 through Newton Circus instead of Stevens Road. This particular service change is, of course, a topic that strikes close to home, literally and metaphorically, given that I live here.
I’m not sure how many of these petitioners (there are three!) are salty busfans (quite a troublesome gang, I understand) and how many of them are salty residents of the Petir Road condos, but it got bad enough that the local MPs had to step in. Well, despite the MPs’ best efforts, LTA appears largely unwilling to budge, only making some token concessions.
Some of you people see partisanship in everything. If you’re one of those guys, you might ask: why now? Perhaps Teo Ho Pin might already have done his fair share of strong-arming and now that he’s gone, they strike while the iron is hot. They’ve done their waiting, after all. Nearly five years of it. After all,
“The current adjustments have been planned when the DTL opened in Bukit Panjang in end 2015, and have been a matter for discussion with grassroots advisers of affected constituencies.”
Turn to page 394
Every time I see these sort of controversies erupt again, I sit down, take a deep breath, and remind myself of a few truths:
- Transferring is good
- Frequency is key
- Rail is the backbone of any transit system
- You can’t stop a pitchfork mob
It’s a spot of self-therapy, if you will. But of course, these are unpalatable to most people. It goes without saying that Jarrett Walker explains why the first can be ugly to deal with, and how necessary the second is if you have the first. At least they have promised to increase 973 frequencies, which should benefit the folks along Hillview Avenue too.
As for the third, possibly, there may be some political sleight of hand here to get over the bout of collective PTSD we still have on MRT reliability. Khaw tried his best, but the public has a long memory. In this particular case, it doesn’t help that the DTL still operates three car trains, which can also be a source of political hand-wringing. In any case, since I’m just a guy on the internet, I’ll sit here and eat my Super Ring as I watch things burn.
But why do we have to get over this? The fundamental fact is that bus services are considerably manpower-intensive, and thus their sustainability should be questioned especially in light of the current situation (if not during the SMRT bus drivers’ strike in 2012). Even if we still operated crewed trains, a 3–car MRT train would be able to carry 800 passengers. That’s six double-decker buses, or 9–10 regular ones, and the consequent increase in manpower. Running double decker buses to replace a MRT service with 2 minute frequencies means your buses would have to come every twenty seconds. Bus stops would also need expansion to allow several buses to load and unload at the same time.
See where this is going? The proper solution for rail breakdowns is thus redundant rail lines with extra capacity to take on the load from elsewhere, and not buses — be it through special disruption shuttles or strengthening the bus network. Look at the Toei Bus network or even the Seibu Bus network. You don’t see many services massively paralleling rail lines in Tokyo like you do over here. And I don’t think there’s a single expressway bus service because entering the Shuto Expressway system is at least 300 yen a pop — payable not to the Tokyo metropolitan government but a corporation responsible for highway upkeep that’s 49.99% owned by the national government.
Perhaps I’ll talk about it more in detail some other time, but I am of the opinion that we have plenty of headroom to increase train frequencies on the Downtown line, at least to cover the passengers displaced by these moves. I don’t think the DTL train fleet is currently very well utilized, for what it is worth.
A legacy of the old days
Why do these services even exist in the first place? After all, how many other towns have the luxury of these direct expressway buses to the CBD that charge basic fares? After moving to Bukit Panjang, I understand it more clearly now. The issues that resulted in the construction of the LRT aren’t exactly solved with the DTL rolling through town, nor will the DTL extension to Sungei Kadut fix. Unlike most new towns, the MRT station and bus interchange of Bukit Panjang are actually located in a corner. Most HDB development is to the north and east of the MRT station, and to the south there’s loads of private housing. They’re not “on the way” of the DTL, forcing a transfer to the LRT, or feeder bus services.
Consequently, the bad old days of 190 meant that everyone from CCK and BP was trying to get on board 190, since the alternative was a transfer at the overcrowded Jurong East. 700 was thus introduced as reliever services for 190 from Woodlands, with a cheeky “RapidBus” branding, limited stops, and traffic light priority.
The intention with RapidBus was, at first, to do something approximating a rail service. However, cuts over the years — traffic light priority was among the first to go — meant that now, 700 is more like any regular plain Jane bus service. That no more bus services with similar features — have been introduced speaks to the failure of the model, though LTA has been experimenting with traffic light priority again (did anything come out of it?). Furthermore, the route itself was shortened to Bukit Panjang.
So what’s remaining that makes 700 special? The Petir Road condos. A majority of HDB residents should be able to walk to Blocks 223/270 bus stops, or 966 if you don’t want to. Now, when you think about it, why run a 15 minute frequency bus service for a few condos? Even something like the minibuses on 825 still need a driver that the LTA has to help pay for, which I guess probably explains the big push into autonomous vehicles.
Keeping a bus service around just for a few condos may sound unreasonable (and in fact, it is!) but there’s a lot more of them around. 825, for one. Others include 42, 150 and 317, which serve mainly low-density private housing estates. The Scrooges among you will be pleased to know, however, that as TE5 Lentor station provides not one, but two exits to Lentor Estate, there may soon no longer be a reason for 825 to exist. 317 may also see some change after the CRL opens at Tavistock in 2029. 150, already a byproduct of another controversial change to service 76, may also see change in 2023 with TEL4.
With all these in mind, it’s thus not a surprise that they would tell 700 users to ask ShareTransport for help or something. Whereas for its role as a peak-hour MRT bypass, the same can be said for 128, which went into hibernation during lockdown and never returned. Who knows if the newly amended 971 will meet this fate too, when the TEL stage 3 opens and a connection becomes available to the Orchard and Shenton Way areas via Stevens.
When school’s out, the headaches begin
The other controversial change is sending 972 through Newton Circus instead of down Stevens Road. This didn’t make sense to me at first, especially when you consider that the Stevens Road bus stops it used to stop at would provide a much better connection to the rail network than the ones just after PIE, being right on top of the TEL Stevens Station, and directly in front of its future exits.
However, this one has a simple reason — the Anglo-Chinese School along Barker Road, inconveniently located smack right in the midpoint of the 1.6km distance between Stevens and Newton stations. Never mind that ACS is one part of the troika of top Singapore public schools and thus with a significantly higher proportion of higher-SES students, but it’s another opportunity to explore how school transportation is hard, despite all the undertones of class warfare I may have inadvertently used.
Despite the appearances from congestion, the area around ACS is actually pretty low-density for Singapore, with plenty of low-rise condos and landed housing. Even though there are a few tall condos around the Balmoral Road junction, given more stringent URA controls in the area regarding number of dwelling units, I can’t really say with a straight face that those are high-density. With a lack of office or recreational facilities for the most part, educational institutions would thus be the main trip generators along the corridor.
But why is ACS Barker such a thorn in the side? The other schools along that section of Bukit Timah — Hwa Chong, Nanyang Girls, NJC, and SCGS, already have decent access to rail — the first three practically having a station to call their own. Only ACS Barker does not, forcing its students to have to rely on a short-distance public bus connection to access the MRT network. Additionally, the walking distance to the NSL platforms at Newton can be quite an issue, reflecting a role that both 171 and 700 used to serve — direct access from ACSBR to Newton NSL and vice versa.
Removing one route and keeping the other would not have made this an issue, but the problem here is that they are removing *both*. This cuts off that connection, and it may be important to keep it, but it doesn’t make sense to keep sending a bus down the Bukit Timah corridor just for ACS Barker. That’s my thinking behind why they would reroute 972, which sees considerably high peak ridership and thus a high allocation of buses already, to preserve the connection.
The concerns around this have apparently been addressed by shifting only selected 972 trips. This solution reminds me of 979M, implemented because 979 couldn’t access the CCK North 7 area while the Stagmont Ring junction was being rebuilt and it used the KJE between Bukit Panjang and Yew Tee. The longer term solution, though, would be to improve pedestrian access in the Newton Circus area, especially for southbound Bukit Timah buses to the MRT, allowing this change to be reverted since the connection it provides can then be made on foot.
The odds are not in your favour
It’s important to remember that not so far away and not so long ago, the amendments of Service 300 were halted by the grassroots before the LTA could actually implement it. However, unlike 300, the cut sectors of 171 and 700 already have parallel rail service.
You may not like it, but that is what it is, and given the MOT political officeholders’ comments on the matter by playing the operating deficit card, it appears that my fellow residents would have no substance to their arguments. I don’t see much of a way out of this apart from fixing the damn LRT quickly — but even that has a limit, if the manufacturing of the 19 new C801B vehicles has been significantly impacted by the current worldwide situation. But when that time comes and they do fix the LRT, don’t be surprised if 976 is kill after that.
Furthermore, the whole concept of buses on expressways is ineffective given that by law, vehicles with a maximum laden weight exceeding 10,000kg — such as a bus —are speed limited to 60kph. Most vehicles are even required to have a limiter installed to enforce this limit. Forget rail, this compares poorly to the expressway speed limit of 90kph, which means that realistically, your bus wouldn’t be allowed to go at the same speeds, let alone faster, than a car. If you have a problem, go take it up with the Traffic Police.
As an experiment, here’s the result of a Google Maps direction lookup I did from Woodlands Interchange to the Punggol Road bus stops. Inclusive of five minutes spent crossing the road at Khatib MRT station, the overall net saving from bus 168, compared to the MRT service making all stops along what would be the equivalent to 168’s SLE leg, is only one (1) minute. Of course in this particular case, canning 700 is a fair bit murkier given the presence of other bus connections at Blk 223/270 and Pending station, but LTA has their own bus planning “simulation” software that is probably more scientific than random Google Maps queries.
Bleeding hearts, I guess all you can do is go on and bleed. As for the rest of you, it’s high time to get over it. They spend billions on the MRT system, they sure damn well are going to get their money’s worth. If you have such a problem with bus rationalization, feel free to travel back in time and talk Ong Teng Cheong out of building the MRT system — since his Cabinet colleagues weren’t exactly fans of the idea too. After all, didn’t a bunch of Harvard economists say we would be fine with an all-bus system?
