Delivery of first of 800 new buses set on Sept

Around 250 buses are expected to be added over the next one year and about 14 new routes to be introduced.

Here's excerpt of Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew before the Parliament yesterday.

Since the announcement in March 2012, LTA and the PTOs have been working out the implementation details. These have largely been sorted out. The first buses under the BSEP will be deployed on our roads sometime in September. We will provide details of the new routes and improvements made to existing services then.

Significant improvements expected over the next one year

 Over the next one year, we expect to add around 250 buses to the combined public bus fleet of about 4,000 buses. This will allow us to improve the service levels for at least 1 in 3 existing bus routes and introduce about 14 new routes.

I know many of you in this House would be anxiously waiting for the new buses to come your way, but please be patient. The new routes will be implemented progressively, and as far as possible, geographically distributed to various parts of the island as needed. The implementation of new routes will be paced with improvements to existing services. I seek Members’ understanding if some of your requests cannot be met, or not as soon as you would like, but I assure you that your constituencies will enjoy improvement in bus services in the not too distant future.

In this regard, LTA has been progressively engaging Members of Parliament and community leaders to better understand the needs of your residents. I would like to thank all of you for your support. We will carefully assess and prioritise the different requests. Our end objective must be to achieve the maximum possible benefit with the finite resources under the BSEP.

Bus driver recruitment and retention remain challenges

To support the roll-out of the BSEP, both PTOs have recently enhanced salaries for bus drivers to attract more Singaporean drivers, and together, the PTOs expect to hire about 360 new bus drivers from now until the end of the year.

While we have made an encouraging start to recruitment of new drivers, and I have urged both PTOs to step up their recruitment. I would expect both PTOs to closely monitor the effectiveness of their enhanced remuneration packages, and be ready to make further adjustments if required. Recruitment and retention of bus drivers will continue to be the most challenging and critical resource constraint in the roll-out of the BSEP, and I will be personally paying close attention to this.