I am very disappointed.

sad, disappointed yet still cute cat added for extra effect

Two weeks ago, on the 104th anniversary of the October Revolution or better known on the Gregorian calendar as the 6th of November, Tower Transit made the news again for the second time in less than half a year for yet again the wrong reasons.

Their misdemeanour? Crashing the MAN A95 demonstrator unit (which they recently acquired under the Sembawang-Yishun Bus Package barely two months before) head-on into a taxi stand at Yishun MRT, at such a force that it sent the entire shelter crashing down on passers-by.

How did this even happen…?

The bus involved was none other than SMB5888H, also affectionately nicknamed “the D” by many bus enthusiasts for its seven-year existence. Unlike quite a number of other buses, this one actually had a spotless safety record since its debut in 2014, something increasingly hard to acheive given current (idk what to say) safety standards. Of course, until that fateful day struck.

Perhaps the special identity of the bus involved contributed a bit to the conflict that would soon ensue on social media, but nonetheless after the crash I was already expecting Tower Transit’s reputation to take a full-blown nosedive, this crash just being the final nail in the coffin after repeated accident after accident on average every 3 weeks since their Bukit Batok saga.

Sure enough, a day after the D got its upper deck smashed into bits, a rant came from a bus enthu with the handle @sg1820g, calling for TTS to leave the local public bus industry:

It was a pretty long one, so long it actually exceeded the 2000-character limit for Instagram posts, so he appended more content below in the comments. I’ll save you the hassle of digging around in Instagram and trying to piece together what he was saying (it came in quite a number of scattered comments anyways, I’ve helped you arrange it in I think the order he meant), so below is a full text of the rant. Please read through it carefully and if possible, look past all the swearing and pretty aggressive tone, and see the argument itself: (I myself was quite upset and disappointed at TTS for screwing up so badly barely seven weeks into the Mandai transition, hence the title of this post)

*Full rant here, since quite a number asking for my thoughts:

TTS must first of all reflect on themselves and reconsider what the fkin heck they have been doing over the past 5 months, replete with endless accidents and breakdowns on their part. Never, I repeat, *never* has any other bus operator screwed up so many times in such a short time span! Dozens of breakdowns and one crash every 3 weeks on average for five whole months? I’m utterly shocked and revolted at what bus service in Singapore has become since the introduction of BCM. If this year’s shitshow from them doesn’t disqualify them from bidding from future bus packages, you can be sure as heck this BS bus contracting model (BCM) is just a sham and a cover to gutter our bus system by feeding it to crappy western companies that only care about their fucking profit!

Some want to say don’t blame anyone yet, or if you must go blame BC/scheduler for being blur sotong. I completely disagree. With what TTS has done so far, no one needs a full-on police investigation to know that there is something extremely wrong with them, and their horrendous safety record is OUT IN THE OPEN for everyone to look at (and be rightfully put off by)!

As a similar example, look at what happened to SMRT Trains back in 2016-2018 when they were fucking up endlessly the two main MRT lines — breakdown every week, plus Joo Koon crash and Bishan flooding. Did blaming the lower staff members help? No! Only when Desmond Kuek resigned and the top management overhauled and company culture changed, did the trains stop breaking down every other day! Same goes here — there will be no peace until we kick out this atrocious Tower Transit altogether!

Then you have clowns everywhere (on discord, IG, FB or whatever) saying “driver fatigue”. Ya ya ya everything happen go blame BC, don’t even bother realising that *every single* BC from *every single operator* is prone to it now that they are working longer hours? Why is it, then, that only TTS has this insane amount of crashes, huh? (Even SBST with 5x the fleet and network size doesn’t even get half as many crashes as TTS does!) If you have open eyes you SHOULD know by now that the problem here lies in TTS’ internal culture, and it should be the entire company taken to task, not just the BC(s) involved! We can start with *not* giving them any more BPs until they get their act together.

And just a reminder that the skeletons in TTS’ closet doesn’t end with just this crash, or the one in Bukit Batok! They have had one crash per month in between, and not to mention their consistently atrocious frequencies and fleet that always breaks down every 2 days!

I honestly give no shits about cameos, fancy bus guides, or heck, *plushies*, because if your buses take forever to come, break down all the damn time, and can’t even guarantee that I won’t get sent to the hospital instead of where I want to go, then you better fuck off, out of my sight and out of my mind. You don’t deserve to be let near buses, let alone good ones like bendies as demo units. Off with your disgusting mindset of profiteering off essential utilities like public transport.

I wish the injured a speedy recovery, and Tower Transit a speedy exit from Singapore. The earlier we wipe out hardcore neolibs like them, the better.

There was a pretty objectionable hashtag amended at the end, which I’ve dropped since it was irrelevant to any of the arguments he made.

Before I get into the reactions and the subsequent saga that erupted, I’ll just give my own take on this (humongous) rant, and disclaimer if you’re one of those political MacCarthyists in the bus community that I’ll put in the spotlight later on: This blog itself carries opinions that are controversial in nature, and we don’t buy any of that “PC” bull that fills the present bus community to an extent that’s toxic and sickening, so if you get offended because it does not agree with your worldview, I’m sorry but you’ve come to the wrong place, and please leave.

First and foremost though, this brutish style gives me some goosebumps, since that was exactly what some of the older posts on this blog were before they got rewritten early this year. Content-wise it’s something I full-on agree with, but as for language… what STC ran into in February cautions against what this guy is doing.

Besides the nasty tone (which understandably was caused by long-built up frustrations at TTS’ repeated failings especially this year), I surprisingly find this “essay” one that I would largely agree with. Most of the arguments he put forth are at worst, decent, discounting the harsh language. And I would wager that he has considered the bigger picture with regards to TTS’ performance against other bus operators, where most bus enthus would later on be arguing only in terms of the crash alone, this person remarkably is able to point out other failings that were just merely compounded by one extra crash on their portfolio, things that I have also highlighted before on this blog: atrocious bus frequency and the profit-first mindset. (TTS also has an alarming number of bus breakdowns on their belt this year, as he pointed out)

The last paragraph however, hit home in such a sharp way that I myself have not been examining too much, and now that I think of it, is also true and a part of TTS’ operating records that I’ve overlooked just looking at the hard aspects of bus operations. It reminds me of a political distraction strategy well-employed by neoliberal states (e.g. the US today) with a distinctive term coined by former US advisor Brzezinski: tittytainment. (I’ll be speaking about this in a later post) And this one link is really the core part of the puzzle, as to why many enthus are still supporting a bus operator that delivers subpar service in comparison to the others! Well done, friend.

The reactions

After the original post went out, initially most were in agreement with the person’s views, with the comment section in the first few hours being largely in agreement. Expected, given how TTS has been doing so badly. Some chimed in in agreement that the BC (bus captain) involved shouldn’t be the sole receiver of blame, but those comments have since been deleted likely under pressure from hostile members.

Then shortly after, one entire flood of (negative, duh) responses came flooding in. Some attacked the premise of the argument (TTS shouldn’t be blamed), others threw whataboutist statements (but the other operators have crashes too!), a few spat out some contorted logic (if TTS should leave because of a crash, then there shouldn’t be PTOs at all!), and of course, when one man is up against a marauding army of angry online commentors, you have to expect the same old dirty ad hominem tricks too.

Then of course more people came out and started hurling that same accusation that this blog has been quite used to already — k n o w – a l l a r m c h a i r c r i t i c, apparently as if that’s the easiest fix to shut out opinions one doesn’t like nowadays.

Examples shown below: (I am not censoring any names, if you choose not to engage the arguments he made but instead attack him as a person for not believing exactly as you do, then I don’t see why I should protect your (online) identity too)

@cran.berrywine

same person as above.

There’s a few more, primarily with (I recall) the labelling of the anti-TTS enthus as “kids”, and one that particularly stood out was how one person took issue with sg1820g over absolutely nothing to do with the incident itself — instead insulting him over his… photographic skills? (I’ll continue looking for that one, I remember saving a few screenshots of these utterly pathetic and comical ad hominems somewhere…) These ad hominems and personal attacks against our friend sg1820g I will address first (since I’ll leave the better content for later). Edit: Found it, here it is. Utterly comical that some choose not to engage with his (albeit rough) arguments but instead with something totally unrelated.

As shit unfolded over the next twenty-four hours I’ve noticed one general pattern: those who call sg1820g a “kid” for his supposedly “one-sided” analysis tended to focus more on the incident as a standalone event, whereas those more in agreement with him also noted greater trends in the operating records of bus operators over a greater period of time, or looking at the bigger picture in short! I mean, I have no inkling as to who the person behind the account is, he could very well be as they said, a kid, but heck for “a kid” to come up with analysis that takes into account the bigger picture, something that I estimate 90% of the community fails to do, then really, this guy is one hella impressive. At the very least, better than most who only view events in isolation.

The whataboutists and differing scales

One of the more common counter-arguments I’ve noticed to his rant usually comes along the lines of:

“Oh, but SBST (presumably picked because that’s the operator of SG1820G) also crashes buses too!”

“No one is perfect!”

“Shouldn’t that mean that all four operators get out, since all of them crash buses too?”

And the best for the last, best in comedy of course:

“If that’s the case, why not just don’t travel, because every mode of transport gets into accidents too!”

I think the main problem with these counter-arguments is that all of them miss the entire essence of his primary argument, which clearly states that TTS has more crashes than the other operators! It’s not a question of whether things go wrong, it’s a question of degree, a nuance that most don’t appreciate. And this matters particularly for buses, since they have the highest mode share in Singapore with prohibitive auto costs, so seemingly “negligible” (I don’t know how people can even think this, but anyway) differences in accident rates between different operators actually have a far greater impact in Singapore than elsewhere (Throw in the fact that TTS now has a monopoly up north and in Bukit Batok/Jurong East/West Coast and that further intensifies the gravity of the situation)

There’s also a detail that most haters have missed out in their adrenaline rush to spotlight this guy as yet another “rogue” (terminology I really don’t think belongs in a hobby community), which is the fact that SBS Transit, the “yardstick” everyone is using, is five times as large as Tower Transit, both in terms of fleet and network size! (And maybe catchment population and ridership too) Yes, Tower Transit may only have six or seven crashes this year (including the tailstrike involving yet another TTS bus with the same HELLO ad just a day after), and SBST may have more given how they joined GAS in doing stupid things at the airport while travel restrictions were in place, if you really want to do a fair comparison of accident rates between TTS and SBST, then you would have to multiply TTS’ crash counts by five, or divide SBST’s crash counts by five, thereby adjusting for the varying sizes!

As an analogy, here’s the number of people in two countries who died in the year of 2020: 411 people died in Monaco, as compared to 2.9 million in the United States. Does this mean the United States is a sh*thole country (using their favourite terminology) rampant with famines, inadequate health care and all? Common sense would say a loud “no!” simply because one is aware that Monaco’s population hovers just under 40 thousand while the US has 330 million! If we adjust for death rates, the story is of course different: Monaco has 10.41 deaths per thousand as compared to the US’ 8.9. Same goes here: just because SBST has more crashes doesn’t necessarily mean it is less safe, simply because it operates way more buses than TTS does!

SBS Transit, already a bit infamous for reckless driving over the years, has racked up about a dozen crashes this year, one of which got another of their KUBs impounded (well done, getting another bus confiscated just as the Traffic Police were going to return you one). Now, in absolute numbers TTS may only have half that figure, but remember that they operate only one-fifth the fleet and network size of SBST, so we’re gonna adjust TTS’ fleet size to match SBST and look at the stats again.

Let’s just use the lower number, 6 crashes. Now we multiply this by 5 so that the size difference equals out, and we get 30 crashes from TTS, adjusted to SBST’s size!

Thirty (three zero, 30) crashes versus SBST’s twelve (12), now the difference is stark and clear as day and night! Yes, no one is perfect and both operators get their buses wrecked once in a while, but comparatively TTS is less safe because they crash more than SBST does! I believe this was what our friend sg1820g was trying to convey when he meant TTS being the worst operator!

And yes, no one is perfect, but I really think that line shouldn’t be freely used to give anyone a free pass and absolution of responsibility, especially when it comes to deep-seated systemic issues. Would you also use “no one is perfect” to absolve the Japanese of responsibility in massacring millions of civilians across many occupied territories in World War Two? I believe not.

It later ended with more cool-headed people coming out in an attempt to remediate the situation, though unfortunately their logic was also a bit flawed, but at least they bothered to engage with the OP’s arguments, which made it at least agree-able. It’s this line: “It’s just the BC’s fault okay?”

Thank you, @sbs6574y

Well… if you crash once or twice, and it almost never happens again after that, then we could probably write it off as human error and say the BC screwed up on the job. But if you are topping the leaderboard in crash counts, without even having the largest fleet or network size, repeatedly saying “oh the BC blur sotong” “you shouldn’t blame the company” “it’s purely human error”, especially when you’re crashing and breaking down in such frequency that you might as well just have daily streaks, doesn’t seem very credible, and skeptics may even find this same tired rhetoric dubious after a while. For TTS the SOP for handling bus crashes nowadays seems just to be… crash, “apologise”, sweep it under the rug, and crash yet another bus barely three weeks later! Doesn’t seem very legit, those “apologies”…

Political MacCarthyism

For some of those who came back with their own counterarguments, I am actually not that concerned, for at least they could engage with the argument with their own, albeit with flawed logic (that is really the point of debate, lol). After all everyone is entitled to hold their own views, and there’s nothing wrong with disagreement. What I am concerned about though, are those who carried out those personal attacks (some even just for the sake of it alone). They are part of a greater trend that is getting increasingly obvious in the bus enthusiast community.

A trend I have noticed increasingly in the bus community (not so much for the train community yet) is the worrying MacCarthyist tendencies that the community is tending towards. Fueled by fanatical support of a few “community leaders” (i.e. those with the most number of followers, I can think of a few that have a thousand and more on IG), what happens is that the crowd proceeds then to accept the opinions of these “community leaders”, internalises them and (again, not a concern until:) proceeds to destroy any person whose opinions do not fully align with their worldview. It becomes so severe that sometimes it is a literal knee-jerk reaction to reading something that doesn’t conform to what they believe, and the fact that many other members of the community also hold the same beliefs as them suddenly “legitimises” this behaviour of discarding and dismissing opposing viewpoints before they even reach the table of scrutiny!

You know what this reminds me of?

1950s America.

Where there was only “one way” to be a proud, patriotic “American”: to fiercely denounce communism, or even any of the more moderate and lighter tones of it. Even to be “pink” in those days was considered treason!

Seeing what goes on in the bus community nowadays (after the TTS saga was over, barely two days later the comm erupted into another cancel war over… a paper desto, so it’s not a once-off incident), I really want to ask: Is there only one way to be a bus enthu now? Must you “love” all four PTOs before you can be considered “a true busfan”? (quoting @cran.berrywine) Is the only acceptable word in the community now those of the “leaders” and those with close links to LTA?

So what, if you run a supposedly “official” and “legit” website or bus comm-related brand name? Does having such a brand equal to holding divine truth now? (I’m always cautioning myself against this route here on STC) If the community doesn’t even permit divergence of thought, what difference is it from the Hong Kong “freedom fighters” who brutally repress anyone who does not agree with their version of democracy?

To the bus enthu community, I am very disappointed in you. For bullying someone just because he doesn’t conform to mainstream views. What gives YOUR opinion more legitimacy than his, anyway?

TTS, I’m also disappointed in you

Before you think I’m just blindly defending this guy here, I know for one no one has a perfect record. I’ve seen SMRT’s wild west days from last decade when they sent buses literally flying into bushes. I’ve seen SBST do their fair share of stupid things (Changi Airport, Paya Lebar “triple hump” come to mind), and of course I’ve talked about GAS’ ridiculously hilarious GTA 5-style driving fails. But why is it that I still consider TTS “the worst” of the four operators?

You might have noticed that our friend wasn’t just speaking about TTS crash rates alone. Besides all the bus smashing going on, he also points out that TTS is also notorious for their breakdown rates and the perennial problem that I can’t shit on them enough for — bad bus frequency!

For those who still think TTS can be considered a superb operator, merely regarding their two most top-profile crashes (this and Bukit Batok) as blips in the record, here’s a few more things to consider, that you might not have considered. (I’m not blaming you for this, because in the sea of “mainstream community opinion” some things easily get overlooked and forgotten on the whims of “community leaders”)

TTS doesn’t just top the charts for crash rates; they don’t perform very well operations-wise, if we take into account the core aspects that any transport operator should be living up to as basic expectation: frequency, reliability chief among them.

Something that has been going on all this while while I AFK-ed from the blog over the past three or so months (posting sporadically), was the spate of breakdowns involving TTS buses.

This was just one of them, bzzt.

At one point (the week after they received Sembawang Bus Interchange, marking the end of the handover) the breakdowns occured as frequently as once every day, forming a sort of “breakdown streak” that rivalled SMRT Trains’ record back in the unstable days when we were still testing out our CBTC!

The one image that sums it up all what happens when you test out new signalling systems on existing, operating rail lines.

So uh Tower Transit, are you testing out CBTC on your buses?

Seriously though, one thing to note is that most of the TTS bus breakdowns involved buses under the recently-transferred Sembawang-Yishun Bus Package, which means that they came from SMRT, and so did most of the bus-related aspects: they were effectively just the Yishun and Sembawang operating divisions of SMRT Buses with the TTS logo slapped on! Under SMRT, these buses were running just fine. No breakdowns, no crashing-every-three-weeks kind of BS! Why is it then, that once everything transferred, almost wholesale intact, to TTS, that all the trouble began coming about?

It’s the same exact buses, the same exact operating staff, the same exact maintenance staff, and the same exact BCs! Doesn’t this reveal some (ahem) “deep-rooted cultural issues”?

This guy probably wants to have some words with TTS

As for bus frequency… I’m getting fed up explaining it over and over again, so I’ll let pictures do the explaining then.

If what is literally your main trunk, your “star player” route does this bad, I say, give yourself a pat on the back.

Jeez, you make people wait 25 minutes for a Citaro???

Now I know why 96 is so crowded in that post I wrote on all-door boarding.

TTS, you are disappointing. Really, really, disappointing. That’s what I’d have said when you were awarded the SYBP, and that is still what I say of you today. After a record seven crashes, at least 30+ breakdowns and consistently running such low frequencies, you should really reflect on yourselves. These triple failures reveal nothing but deep-rooted systemic issues within TTS that needs to be addressed.

Every single time we conveniently blame the individual instead of looking further, we collectively plant a time bomb that will come to bite us all together for negligence. If there is a systemic problem, let’s talk about it. Find ways to resolve it. Not cover it up and pretend it isn’t there when it is, and then watch and deny the increasing numbers of skeletons in your closet!

If you can’t find the resources to operate a full-blown second bus package, then honestly just don’t bid! What’s wrong with just staying in Bulim?

As an update, I’ve launched an Instagram and Linktree page for the STC blog. Will post blog updates there too.

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