Bus Contracting Model – Storage buses

Under the Bus Contracting Model (BCM) for Singapore’s public bus industry, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) owns all bus assets (such as buses, bus depots, bus interchanges/terminals, and so forth). As for buses, the LTA is also responsible for the renewal and replacement of these assets, and currently maintains a pool of spare buses that can be readily leased to bus operators when needed.

However, in recent years, a steady increase in excess buses (that have not been leased to any operators) has been observed. These vehicles are registered, yet remain garaged in bus depots and not in revenue service. Furthermore, time spent while in storage still counts towards the 17-year statutory lifespan for public buses. Hence, this article aims to shed some light on current practices.

These developments come on top of an unprecedented bus industry spending, with LTA posting a $1.013 billion deficit for the 2018/19 financial year.

See also: Transitioning of Buses to BCM

Excess buses in depots

Under the BCM, bus operators pay LTA a fee to lease public buses. At the same time, operators have to meet service standards set out by the LTA, governing the frequency, operating hours and percentage of high capacity buses deployed on a route. These standards change over time as the LTA tweaks the level of service required.

As a result, bus operators have a financial incentive to optimize their operations and minimize the number of buses they lease from LTA. One way operators achieve this is through efficient scheduling of buses – for example, increased use of bus interlining (which schedules bus drivers on several different bus routes during a shift). This practice rose to notoriety when it was blamed for a spate of Bus Captain resignations in September 2016, but all bus operators engage in some form of this practice.

See also: Bus Interlining

Bus depots functioning as excess bus storage

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Storage buses are typically parked at a corner of a bus depot (most prominently in Seletar Bus Depot). They are formally assigned to an operator (the lessee of the depot where the bus is parked) by means of vehicle registration, but the operator does not use these vehicles, nor does it pay LTA to lease these buses. It is understood that the upkeep of these storage buses is maintained by the said bus operator.

Some of these storage buses were registered and directly assigned to the storage fleet, without seeing a day of revenue service.

More recently, the LTA has begun to lay-up buses in storage, likely to avoid having to pay road tax on these vehicles. It is unclear why this is practice is carried out, since all road tax revenue is returned to the Government. With or without the lay-up, buses in storage are still formally registered and thus count down towards their 17-year statutory lifespan even while sitting unused in storage. The current practice of mothballing registered buses is thus a wasteful use of a bus’ statutory lifespan.

Buses in storage:

Information Source: SGWiki

Excess buses incoming

Despite the many buses currently in storage, a large influx of new buses is concerning. Unless the LTA has plans for a drastic increase in bus service levels in the coming months or years, the glut of excess buses in storage (registered or otherwise) will be a problem that will only increase in the future.

Currently, a total of 150 Euro 6 single-deck buses (MAN A22) and 250 Euro 6 double-deck buses (MAN A95) are in the midst of registration as part of a bus purchase in 2018. Registration of these new buses has been slow due to the introduction of 50 diesel hybrid buses (Volvo B5LH) and 60 electric buses (BYD K9 (Gemilang), ST Engineering Electric Bus, Yutong E12, Yutong E12DD) which are bring prioritized for introduction to revenue service.

In addition, the LTA has awarded tenders for more buses, namely 111 Euro 6 double-deck buses (MAN A95) awarded later in 2018, followed by a further 100 Three-Door Euro 6 Double Decker Buses scheduled to enter service in 2020.

Moving forward

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Currently, in addition to storage buses being parked at Seletar Bus Depot, the remainder Euro 6 MAN buses that have yet to be registered (as part of the 2018 MAN Euro 6 bus order) are parked at PLG Logistics in Tuas South and ST Engineering Land Systems’ compound at Corporation Road, and it is not known how much costs are involved for the storage of these buses at private premises.

Under contractual obligations, LTA will likely continue to receive these new buses at a time when there is an excess of unused buses in Singapore, unless it works out a revised timeline to defer the delivery of these new vehicles. With LTA rationalising bus routes recently and cutting excess in a time of unprofitability, it remains to be seen if the LTA will continue to be holding on to large numbers of unregistered buses.

See Also

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