Because of a wide variety of historical and somewhat practical reasons, bus depots nowadays tend to be located rather far from inhabited areas. Case in point, every single new bus depot inaugurated under the Bus Contracting Model so far: Bulim, Loyang, Seletar, Ulu Pandan, Mandai. In fact, the upcoming Sengkang West depot will only be the first in seven years of BCM history to be located somewhat near places of human activity.
Before I go into all the operational problems arising from such practices, here’s a bit of backstory as to how we got here in the first place.
So back in those days where buses locally were literal boxes of corrugated metal sheets with clunky engines plodding along at a snail’s pace compared to today’s vehicles, the many bus companies that were available parked their buses by the roadside overnight, kind of like how taxi drivers park their vehicles if they don’t have someone to pass the vehicle over to for the night shift nowadays. As long as a legal parking place was found, there was where buses would be parked.
Then of course, 1973 saw the merger of the big four companies into today’s SBS, and alongside this consolidation also saw the effort by the Government to consolidate bus infrastructure through construction of centralised bus terminals (and later on in the 1990s, bus interchanges) and some depots as hubs of operations and bus upkeep.
Initially these bus depots were placed nearer to town to cut down on deadheading mileage, but as time went by residents got fed up with the noise and smell of the buses starting up at 5am in the morning, thus prompting SBS to shift their bus depots out of town, at first into industrial estates as a mitigation measure. If you think the roar of a badly-maintained CDGE or KUB radiator was earrape, think again. That was how the 5 big (pre-BCM) SBST depots came about in their present form: Ang Mo Kio, Bedok North, Soon Lee, Bukit Batok and Braddell. When Trans Island was split off from SBS in 1982, they would eventually do the same, situating their depots all the way up in Kranji.
Fast forward a few decades to the 2010s when LTA began building additional bus infrastructure to cope with rising service level needs, this same practice (along the same rationale) carried over into the new bus parks and depots built first under BSEP, then the BCM. Of course, as the industrial parks were already far more mature by then that meant flinging the bus depots even further out into the wilderness. Mandai Depot’s location can literally be described as being “in the middle of nowhere”, an almost perfect definition of that term…. which probably explains why the management there is straight up crazy with low-capacity B5LH stunts everywhere, everytime…
Now of course, locating bus depots far out in industrial parks and *gasp* middle of nowhere might have solved the issue of noise and emissions, but this move pretty much cast down a lot of operational headaches for bus operators.
Why it isn’t exactly a good idea to fling a depot that far-
Below are a few operational issues that crop up consistently if your depot is located extremely far out. Those working in Loyang and Mandai know this first-hand 😉
High deadhead mileage
If the term isn’t familiar to you, it basically means that buses have to travel further on “off service” between the bus depot and the bus interchange / route starting points to begin service, and vice versa when the bus is withdrawn. This should be quite a no-brainer, since the further you locate the bus depot from civilisation, the further it needs to travel to the bus interchange which is located in — you guessed it — human-inhabited areas! High deadhead mileages usually imply a few things operations-wise.
The most obvious one is that of travel times — longer deadhead mileages almost usually translate to longer deadheading trip times, which gets especially significant if the deadhead is done to the non-anchor end of a bus route (for instance, deadheading from Kranji Depot to Boon Lay Interchange for Service 187 or *gasp* Bulim to Bedok for the old Service 66!). Time that could be spent in revenue service spent deadheading. Not exactly the “efficacy” one is looking for, especially since that seems to be a theme of the BCM so far…
More significantly, having a longer deadhead route also means more opportunities for traffic along the way (especially peak hour traffic, when the A/S slot buses are deployed) to hold up a bus being launched from the depot en route to entering revenue service. Loyang Depot for instance, being located close to that choke-point called Loyang Ave (oh no), often sees its buses being dispatched straight into traffic madness, resulting in the buses arriving at Punggol Bus Interchange late, thereby delaying trips from there (and messing up service levels). A similar story could be told for Mandai and notoriously bad traffic on the BKE…
This has always been a problem with long deadhead miles too, but more apparent than ever before with the introduction of electric buses and that is the question of consumption of energy resources for the deadhead trip itself rather than the actual revenue service trips. For electric buses, it’s also a question of whether the bus has enough battery (!!!) to drive back to the bus depot at the end of its trip. Currently, it appears that standard practice is to withdraw an electric bus from service when the battery level goes below 10%, as a buffer so the battery doesn’t literally die while in the middle of a busy expressway on the way back to the depot. Ten percent. Let that sink in. That’s just 90% of the battery available for revenue service trips.
In more extreme cases, long deadhead distances might also mean some rather inexplicable decisions made, such as abandoning the bus at the bus interchange for the rest of the day (a la SG4005Z on its debut day), presumably because the battery was so drained it couldn’t even last the drive from Yishun to Seletar Depot… Additional considerations that throw a wrench in our electrification works, one of the reasons why I think it’s 2022 already and we have yet to do any serious mass electrification of our fleet.
Doesn’t help that the BCM package boundaries are nothing short of inexplicable… how does Hougang depot (the smallest of the original SBST ones) get to control literally everything from Sengkang to Geylang??? Like, Service 11, 140 and 141 under Hougang?? What kind of deadhead mileage is that going to rack up? Not to mention how Bukit Merah buses are based in Ulu Pandan Depot (located in Jurong East of all places). Recipe for disaster when electric buses (and battery problems) come in en masse…
Employee buses
Wondered how our BCs go home at night after bus services cease operations? Or how the morning shift BCs get to work in the first place? Well, bus depots run employee buses, buses from the main fleet specially dedicated to hauling around uniformed PTO employees to and fro bus depots located in far-flung ulu corners. Sounds fine, until you realise all the buses being run under the EB scheme could potentially have been used to further strengthen service on the main network… Spreading service thin, eh? Not to mention that employee bus systems are another can of worms on their own: Tower Transit’s “microtransit” employee shuttles kicked up quite a fuss a while back over nonexistent and unreliable service. Imagine if the bus service that got the bus drivers to work being as unreliable as certain routes on the main network right now. You’d get absolute pandemonium during the morning peak hour. And you do NOT want that.
This really seems to be a problem of locating bus depots too far out from inhabited areas. The “older” SBST depots located nearer to civilisation hardly have to contend with EB-related issues, simply because there is less of a need for specialised employee shuttles! For instance, AMDEP BCs have the option of taking buses 45, 70 (A), 265 or 268 to and from their workplace. Those working in the newer BCM ones aren’t so lucky.
Scheduling
The thing about OS trips (and in fact bus journeys in general) between bus depots and bus interchanges/terminals, is that the longer the distance between two “time-points” (could be stops or checkpoints, you get what I mean), the more uncertain things could possibly get. All those traffic lights that one faces on the way to the bus interchange, who could possibly determine accurately how much they would hold up a deadheading bus? More uncertainty introduced into scheduling, and this certainly doesn’t bode well for smaller bus interchanges that cannot afford to house too many buses at once as a result of schedule buffering.
Fehr wuht??
Consider this: What’s the point of locating the bus depot so far away from built environment, when at the end of the day the BC (who lives among civilisation like everyone else) has to travel so far out to the bus depot just to collect the bus, and then deadhead the bus all the way back into civilisation to commence revenue service, and then traverse that equally far distance back to the depot at the end of revenue service before returning home to his apartment in the city?? If this arrangement seems unbelievably absurd, it most definitely is. That’s a lot of wasted time and energy (both in terms of that of the employee, and fuel).
Another thing about bus depots…
Some bus routes, as a legacy from the SBST era, were set up to terminate or commence service from a bus depot, for a variety of reasons that will remain enigmatic to many. There still do remain a handful of bus routes that originate from (the old SBST ones, it must be noted) bus depots, namely 17A, 45, 48, 185, 265, 268 and 502. Some of these bus depots serve as the origin point for multiple routes at once, especially Ang Mo Kio (45, 265, 268) and Soon Lee (185 and 502). What irks me is the missed potential that could have been tapped here — to utilise these bus depots, which act essentially as transfer nodes for the routes that terminate there.
Currently, boarding and alighting activities are prohibited at bus depots. Understandable security concern behind such a regulation, but that rudely breaks many potential connections…
We go 2640km north.
Below is a structure that will not be identified for now. Try to identify it.
What did you think this structure was? Put your answer down in the comments below, wrong answers only!! 😀
Buffer images of Floof (from the Floof website) before I reveal the answer:
When I say “bus depot exit”, this probably comes to mind for most Singaporeans:
Something very imposing, not quite friendly and welcoming. Heavy security elements involved too.
Recall however, that the ‘Singapore way’ of doing things is usually a quirky exception to standard practice somewhere else, and hence things need not be this way. (I know some are already wailing and claiming I’m loosening “needed security” in public transport infrastructure at this point, hold on I’ll get to that part in a bit)
2640km directly north of Singapore lies a 4th-tier Chinese city which offers a possible alternative way of setting up bus depots in relation to the overall network in general.
Here’s the answer to the question I posed earlier, as to the identity of that structure in question:
Yep, that’s how the entrances of bus depots look like in Kunming, southwest China. The most striking detail one notices is the integration of the “bus interchange” and “bus depot” functions under a single facility. And if it hasn’t been noticed already, that bus depot is placed right smack within a residential area. Right away, the issue of long deadhead miles and distance between depot and civilisation (and the fehr wuht question) are nonexistent already.
By the way in case you’re wondering, that specific bus depot in northwestern Kunming isn’t just a once-off. Almost every single bus depot in Kunming is built in such a manner, another of those seen in the cover photo of this post, and more below:
And if those structures seem too slipshod to you, here’s one encased in a somewhat… authoritative facade:
Now, unlike our bus interchanges, the bus-depot-cum-interchange facilities in Kunming have a few key differences in operation.
Here’s a typical bus interchange from Singapore, home to the infamously useless Service 284:
Not included in the photo above: arrangement for the bus park. As you can see, there is a large space set aside for the passenger concourse, with boarding berths arranged in series along the length of the bus interchange. Even though this sort of simplifies things on the passenger end, it does translate to a lot of space wastage in the bus park, since lots of space has to be reserved for the driveways that allow the buses to maneouvre into the parking lots in the first place. At the end of the day, even with a seemingly large area, there are only so few parking lots you could fit inside your facility, a running theme among most of the newer ITHs which have no shortage of capacity issues thus leading to the knock-on effects when rationalisation exercises happen.
In Kunming, the relative proportion of the passenger concourse area to the area set aside for parking is comparatively lower, but in return their configuration is more accessible. What do I mean?
Above is the arrangement for a typical depot entrance/exit driveway in Kunming (and other Chinese cities). You will notice that the bus services are more accessible to both the passengers and buses alike. Rather than having to rack up more traffic inside a bus interchange from driving in circles to the boarding berth and then to the exit, the bus can literally drive off once all passengers are on board. By drive off, I mean get on its way on the many roads crossing the city. At the same time, the boarding berths are also directly accessed from the street, which adds to the convenience by reducing the access penalty (time taken to get from the street to inside the vehicle, minus waiting time) to zero. Arranging the boarding berths in parallel (as opposed to Singapore’s series configuration) also cuts down greatly on the space needed for such integrated depot-interchange bus facilities, leaving more space for parking and other whatnot needed for a depot to function. This is especially important for the “better” depots that are located closer to, or within areas of human activity, where space constraints are a critical issue that have to be contended with.
Another critical benefit of this arrangement: by moving services to start from bus depot-cum-interchange as per Kunming, deadhead mileage for a large number of bus routes in Kunming is zero. Because your bus is literally ready to pick up passengers once you start it up, as they are waiting directly outside the depot’s gates and not 10km away.
Of course, if Singapore deems the Kunming bus depot model a bit too shabby (because after all Kunming is a 4th-tier backwater city that only recently was recognised as an “honourary 1st-tier city” for being a national role model for public transit services), we could always manifest our glorification-of-the-rich mentality and dress up such facilities in nice facades like we always did. You know, like imagine that kind of bus facility wrapped up with this kind of arch at the entrance:
Would be quite fitting for our first-world city-state status, and certainly that would get touted as an example of “space-saving” transit infrastructure that many more cities would emulate in the future. After all, Kunming’s transit clout only extends as far as the territory of the PRC… Plus, combining our bus depots with an “interchange function” effectively turns bus depots into connection points of their own! Bonus advantage: Depot-based services (as opposed to interchange-based services) worry less about disruptions along the route affecting service reliability (esp. for jumpbus and loop routes), since there are always a handful of spare buses to launch in contingency situations.
But that isn’t all that Kunming’s bus system does better than us, because it would be too trivial to feature just a design change of bus depots as an entire article (and not a CotD), right?
Besides this more intuitive design for bus depots, the placement of such bus depots is also such that they are better able to serve the residents of the city. And of course, such a design of bus depots (mentioned above) was also born partially out of such a placement of bus depots right within the heartlands where people live, work and play.
Just take a look at where Kunming’s bus depots are. Then compare to where Singapore’s ones are. Map here.
It’s quite obvious who’s putting their bus depots where bus service is needed, and who’s flinging them out into ulu corners.
Doing this lets you solve more problems that exist currently in Singapore’s bus system, namely the high deadhead mileage (for services that don’t ALREADY start at the depot) and the problem of (ahem) employee buses. One might ask, how do bus drivers in Kunming get to work in the morning without the dedicated employee shuttles then? Simple. The first buses launched out of depot gates in the very early morning (5am ish) are the feeders, which bring drivers who live in feeder catchment areas to the bus depot. Since the depots are also bus terminals/interchanges, they merely have to stay on board the bus after everyone alights at the berth to report for work. Then the shorter-range trunk services commence operation, bringing those living slightly further away to work, and finally with more drivers available the longer trunk routes are launched to let the remaining bus drivers get to work in time to deal with the peak crowds. That’s the benefit of locating bus depots where the people are, I suppose.
One would also notice that Kunming has far more “depots” than Singapore, about twice or three times more (counting all, including those not marked on the maps above, according to the Kunming bus website they have 33 bus parks). Sounds like a scary amount of land being set aside for bus operations, but in reality most bus depots in Kunming are better termed as “bus parks” — facilities that support bus parking, refueling, washing and basic maintenance. Stuff that is sufficient for operation at a certain standard, and if absolutely necessary even the bigger “bus depots” are also close by. That’s another way they put their bus facilities closer to people — breaking them up into smaller chunks that fit easier within neighbourhood estates. If Singapore has “inserted HDB estates”, Kunming has “inserted bus parks”. That’s partly also the reason why about 75% of all bus routes in Kunming have one or two ends of the route based at a bus park/depot directly.
B…but..!
Already hearing some voices going (to steal my own quote from the earlier long trunks post) “But there’s a reason why we flung the depots out into ulu areas in the first place, and we have to respect that reason!” Well, there’s a critical difference between long trunk routes, and the practice of placing bus depots in the middle of nowhere. As Marx pointed out the need for changes in battle tactics as firearms were invented (the heroic banzai charge faded into irrelevance in the wake of the sniper’s aim), it is also equally needed today to relook this practice of depot placement, for the simple reason that the justification behind such a practice applies less to today’s conditions as well! (If you will mind me, here’s some materialist theory from Marx himself.)
Recall that SBS’ original reasoning for moving bus parking facilities out of areas of heavy human activity was that the loud noises from the clunky buses of the past was more than just a slight annoyance to the thousands of residents living directly besides such facilities then. Well if one pays attention to the newer incoming buses nowadays, you might notice that noise, smoke and other pollution-related concerns directly caused by buses have reduced drastically. Sure, we still have our fair share of Euro 4 and 5 buses with broken radiators giving riders their daily dose of earrape (that’s a maintenance issue (and skill issue) on the part of the depot though), but as a whole buses are less noisy and spew less toxic and stinky gas into the surrounding environment as their counterparts from a few decades ago. With more electric buses coming in in the coming years whatever noise argument used to fling bus depots out into the wilderness will turn irrelevant and eventually, completely moot. By then, the advantages of situating bus depots nearer to people and integrating them with bus interchanges, advantages which Kunming residents have been enjoying for decades, will far outstrip the drawbacks. In fact, if you ask me, I think the balance had already tipped when we phased out the last of our wheelchair-inaccessible buses in 2020. Like what I said with increasing bus fleets now to fully enjoy the power automated buses could unleash, it is wise to future-proof our system now and moving our bus depots back into areas of civilisation is just one such step. Side effect: Fewer concerns when running electric buses since we don’t need to set aside a ridiculous 10% battery margin for deadheading back to depots… since the electric buses themselves are already running toward the depot in the first place.
Application time (It comes to Singapore O.o)
Well, with almost everything already mapped out for us in terms of bus infrastructure (a dizzying stream of new bus interchanges, “ITHs“, bus depots, and new bus package tenders all rushing at us come 2023 and beyond), it seems unfortunately that there is no room for this new way of building bus depots… right? Well… there do exist such spaces if one looks hard enough :p
Relocation of Ang Mo Kio Bus Depot
Ang Mo Kio Depot (the SBS Transit one that still remains in use today) is ridiculed by many for its archaic and outdated practices by depot management, a statement that employees there can also attest to. There’s some basis in that: as one of SBST’s oldest depots (having been around since 1978), the facility is certainly in need of some serious technological upgrades to bring it in line with the newest developments in the public bus industry. Dinosaur land for dinosaur buses, as they say, with the depot having the fewest of those “new” bus models. Only the B5LH and Euro VI A95 units are based here, with the AMDEP management having rejected the 3-door and other new models introduced progressively from 2018.
As the terminating point for 3 routes (the most for any depot serving a terminus function), it certainly is also a waste to see a missed connection at AMDEP between services 45, 265 and 268, especially when 268 leaves the depot in a different direction from the other two routes. There is also the question of long deadhead miles for many services that AMDEP currently supports, with some buses having to deadhead the entire length of the initial MRT line opened in November 1987 (Yio Chu Kang – Toa Payoh for AMDEP 88). Deadhead miles aren’t any shorter for buses serving Bishan, all of which are based in this facility north of Yio Chu Kang MRT…
On the other hand you also have Yio Chu Kang Bus Interchange which is struggling with capacity problems right now after the amendment that placed 860 to start here. Frequency on once-frequent services like 72 has gone down like a rock due to parking lot constraints that impose limits on how frequent your buses can be run (as a buffer, as running buses too frequently incurs the risk of 5 or 6 of them winding up together and some of them not being able to find a parking lot). The good thing about it though, is that it sits on the junction of two major roads: Ang Mo Kio Ave 6 and Ave 8. The former is the main axis of travel that takes one from Yishun all the way to Novena and into the city. The latter is the main deadhead route used by AMDEP (and SEDEP) buses in Ang Mo Kio and Bishan.
Why not then, we merge the Ang Mo Kio bus depot with the Yio Chu Kang bus interchange? As a brief overview, the depot would be relocated to the present site of Yio Chu Kang Interchange (but in an expanded area).
Blue denotes the main area of the new Ang Mo Kio depot, red the current extent of YCK Int, and yellow the auxillary parking area constituting the parking lots of the former YCK Int that are now disused. Don’t mind me using the one lane of the driveway as parking space too.
Here’s a slightly more detailed plan that details vehicular movement in and out of the depot by circumstance. Map link is the same one as above, here.
Although the parallel berth configuration works best in the context of bus depots that randomly open up to the street, the series berth configuration is retained here for the easy connection to Yio Chu Kang MRT station (hence giving this new combined facility a third name to go by: “Yio Chu Kang ITH”). The problem with the current YCK station is really that of the station not opening up directly to either the boarding or alighting berths of the interchange, which is really quite a hassle. At least, they are under the same roof, so not complaining about that. Depending on where the bus comes in from, the alighting point may be at the same location as the boarding berths, or at the alighting point that successive generations of Yio Chu Kang Interchange have been using. With AMDEP relocated into a newer facility, not only does the depot administration have no more excuse to remain being a dinosaur in mentality, the deadhead for Yio Chu Kang has been reduced to zero, and that of Ang Mo Kio, Bishan, and Toa Payoh reduced significantly.
Since the new AMDEP covers a rather large area, connections to Ang Mo Kio Ave 9 (up north) is retained through a second alighting and boarding point provided at a northern exit, built Kunming-style for maximum efficiency.
Now that the passenger area has been shifted primarily to the MRT station, the massive space taken up by the current interchange concourse (indicated in red in the first map) can now be used for far more parking space, admin blocks, bus washes, maintenance facilities and whatever else goes into a full-fledged bus depot capable of supporting itself and a spinoff bus park (Braddell). Of course, some sharp eyes have noticed that the new AMDEP facility has a smaller space to work with than the former facility at Street 63. Fret not, for there has long been a solution to spatial woes that has even existed in our depot construction history for quite a long while already.
If you can’t build outwards, build upwards.
If this could be done for Soon Lee Bus Depot in 2001, there is no reason this can be done for a relocated Ang Mo Kio Bus Depot in 2022. Note that SLBP can fit about 400-500 buses comfortably in half the space of the current AMDEP, which is honestly quite a feat that most of the newer BCM depots struggle to even achieve. Perhaps this could be a way out for SEDEP’s scheduling woes — some load given back to AMDEP so it could focus more resources on its core routes? With the area that the new AMDEP has, it could potentially house more than 500 buses, equipped with installations that prep it for newer buses coming in in the next decade and beyond — hundreds of charging points being the key feature here. And who wouldn’t appreciate a refreshed operations control centre 😉
Lor 1 Geylang Bus Park
Name me one thing Kunming does with its buses, that Singapore doesn’t.
Besides the fact that they’re still embracing articulated buses, they plant their bus parks right smack downtown. Within the 2nd Ring Road (commonly accepted as “the downtown” of Kunming), there are 3 bus parks, with a 4th (comparatively major) bus depot located right on its outer border. Us? The nearest bus garaging facility to our CBD is Braddell Bus Park, a 25 minute drive from downtown. And it does not serve the regions closest to downtown. The Bukit Merah and HarbourFront interchanges are handled by Ulu Pandan Bus Depot, located all the way up west, almost reaching Jurong East. I wish them luck trying out electric bus operations, and have fun with their batteries dying on the AYE en-route back to depot. 🙂
Well, we actually have one good spot where we could potentially build a base for buses serving the CBD. Despite not being in the CBD itself, it is far closer than all existing depots to the CBD, and its location is far more suitable to serve areas such as Bukit Merah, HarbourFront and Marina Centre. Located on the eastern periphery of the CBD, I present the Lorong 1 Geylang Bus Park and Depot:
Like with the proposed relocated Ang Mo Kio Bus Depot, the new Geylang Bus Depot will feature multi-storey bus storage facilities to take on the expected comparatively heavier demand of CBD-based bus services. The interesting part of the Geylang complex is that it is comprised of two sections (instead of the usual bus depot built as one piece) as a workaround for space constraints in Geylang. The open space to the south of Geylang Rd is therefore utilised as a multi-storey bus parking area to soak up the majority of demand in the surrounding areas, including much of the CBD and some areas in Bukit Merah. And here’s the kicker: there is an elevated driveway linking the initial and expansion phases of this new facility, in case you’re wondering how buses are going to transfer themselves between the two sections. Again, a desperately-needed and much-welcome technological upgrade to this 40-or-so-year old bus terminal which gets more decrepit by the day.
Once the expansion of the Geylang facility is complete, we can then transfer control of the following to this new facility:
- Eunos Interchange (current: HGDEP)
- Sims Place Terminal (current: HGDEP)
- Bukit Merah Interchange (current: UPDEP)
And here’s an interesting concept that I want to see trialled here in Singapore: depots as infrastructure (ie not aligned to any particular bus package)
Rather than assigning Geylang Depot to any bus package or specific operator, this facility will be run by LTA and the various bus operators merely use this space for parking operations of buses. Therefore, one can expect buses across different bus packages, with (roughly) equal numbers of buses from different operators parked together in this proposed Geylang Bus Depot at night, heading out to commence service in the morning together from the CBD.
A major problem facing (especially CBD-bound bus services) longer bus routes besides the scheduling is that of having insufficient resources on hand as the depot has to single-handedly tank all operations on its own (as opposed to through-route services which have a dual-depot option due to there being a bus depot available at either end). This vastly constrains bus service levels especially on CBD bus services, as depot space in the anchor depot somewhere out there constrains service levels somewhere else. This cannot happen, and should not be happening in the first place. Geylang Depot thus serves as a much-needed parking lot near downtown for operators outside the city to be able to place additional buses on high-demand CBD routes without having to mess up their own house (Kranji Depot) or worry about trading off worse service elsewhere (Mandai Depot).
Another candidate location would be the Shenton Way bus terminal, located directly at the heart of Singapore’s financial district. We should perhaps revive the practice of parking overnight at bus terminals, especially at bus terminals where a depot is nowhere nearby. Heck, I think Shenton Way has a higher parking capacity (i.e. number of buses that can be parked inside) than a few of those “bus parks” in Kunming. If our friends 2640km up north can carve out a small parking lot for 25 buses and call it a bus park and use it as such, certainly we could do the same for a much larger dedicated bus facility, right? *looks intensely*
If we get a tad more imaginative, we could perhaps explore converting Shenton Way into a full-blown bus park (built Kunming-style) with the exit facing Shenton Way, and with maximising the number of buses that can be parked in the new-found parking space we could perhaps make Shenton Way Terminal/Bus Park a second free-for-all parking lot serving Bukit Merah, Marina Centre and the upcoming Marina South ITH. Sounds like a plan to me!
With technological advancement and the changing times, there no longer exists any substantial basis for buses to be located so far from where their passengers are. Cities in China, Kunming being one of them (there are many other cities using the depot-cum-interchange model too, and some of those even have better-looking facilities, but Kunming was picked as it is frequently cited as a role model for stellar public bus services in the PRC), have long been doing the more coherent way of organising buses and bus routes: rather than a few oversized depots that cannot fit anywhere near human civilisation, break them into smaller, more manageable chunks that can be inserted anywhere in the city. And make those smaller depots transit hubs in themselves. For the bus (and transit in general) system in any city shouldn’t just be integrated with itself. It also needs to integrate itself with people, and the places in which they live, work and play.
And it simply makes more sense, from whichever standpoint, to do more integration, not less.
Kunming is internationally renowned for their hospitable climate year-round. Perhaps, they should also be recognised for their efficient management of bus services (can’t be said about their trains yet). And recognition should be given for their execution of the hub-and-spoke model that incurs few, if not none of their drawbacks. (The secret sauce? Long feeders instead of short feeders)
On a more personal note, I do highly encourage visiting Kunming as a tourist, you will enjoy it there tremendously regardless of what you went for.
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SG Transport Critic 
8 thoughts on “A return to the heartlands…”