The global pandemic caused KEITH JENKINSON to cut short a holiday in the city state where he was able to witness how its scheduled bus services adapted to the fast developing emergency
Despite having to return to the UK earlier than planned owing to the increasing number of flight cancellations, being in Singapore visiting family throughout the whole of March gave me the opportunity to watch the country and its transport network come to terms with the coronavirus pandemic.
Singapore’s bus services are controlled by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and maintained by four operators, arms length state-owned SMRT (1,450 buses); SBS Transit (3,512) in which ComfortDelGro has a 75% share; Go-Ahead (438); and Tower Transit (357), the last two of which made their debut in 2016 when the LTA franchised routes under its Bus Contracting Model tendering process.
On my arrival on 29 February, all the country’s bus and MRT (mass rapid transit underground/light rail) systems were running at their normal high frequencies, as too were the cross-border services between Malaysia and Singapore, which are operated by SMRT and several Malaysian companies.
While the repainting of all Singapore’s public buses into the LTA’s …
