LTA announced the GCM back in 2014. But in fact LTA wanted GCM long time. How did this begin?
History:
SBST and SMRT are public enlisted companies listed so whatever they earn is profit and they only cared abt profits. As such their bus services were at times neglected. So from 2009 LTA took on the central planning of bus routes and it was fully taken over in 2012 when BSEP was introduced and it introduced many routes with many controversies. And with the BSEP LTA expanded the bus fleet and added many buses. The last time when SBST introduced new routes was in 2005 where it launched many routes to provide connectivity. But in 2014 LTA decided to take over the bus industry to respond faster. Hence the first package was Bulim Package as Bulim Depot was new and completed and SMRT had just moved in. The first package was awarded to Tower Transit which promised alot of things. Next was Loyang Bus Package as the Loyang Bus depot was brand new and SBST used to park new Citaros for registration. Go Ahead was awarded. So for the BSEP and GCM the LTA tapped on SBST and SMRT orders. Mainly the Alexander Enviro500 MAN A22 Volvo WEG B9TL and Mercedes Benz Citaro. The LTA also decided to tap on MAN A95 orders too and decided to register the Batch 2 too. So in order to distngush the BSEP buses WEG B9TLS were registered from 33xx to 35xx Mercedes Benz Citaro from 63xx to 65xx and 20xx MAN A22 SMB 30xx to 31xx and E500 from 35xx to 36xx. However with the GCM being rolled out the buses were registered with SG prefix and each number on WEG were for different packages.
So Tower Transit had taken over the Bulim Depot in July 2015 and they prepared by training their bus captains everyday. They also conducted Bulim Bus Carnival to introduce themselves. Closer to May 2016 they started intensive training by going into the bus interchanges and Terminals they were in charge. Recently for the prep the Bus Interchange were repainted new equipments were brought in and the new buses which were painted in white were painted in green.
So let's welcome Tower Transit! We hope they will raise the standards in the bus industry and we have high expectations
