With effect from Sunday, 22 October 2017, bus services at Changi Airport are being served by Mercedes-Benz Citaro buses.
Bus Services 24, 27, 34, 36, 53, 110 and 858 are operating with nearly a full fleet of these European buses as part of an LTA mandate, which recently incorporated an in-bus announcement advising commuters to inform the Bus Captain if they see any suspicious persons or articles. As Citaro buses feature public announcement systems, these buses were used as a platform to launch such announcements.
The announcement is recorded in 4 languages (English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil) and is played at each Airport Terminal Building twice as part of the increased security presence at the Airport.
Please remember to take all your personal belongings when alighting. If you see any suspicious articles, report it to our Bus Captain.
These announcements are paired to the Trapeze CFMS system which has a GPS location feature and has the ability to play announcements automatically based on the actual location of the bus. However, outside of a short trial in early 2017, LTA only launched this feature for bus stop announcements with the Volvo B5LH buses in December 2018.
Exceptions
Go-Ahead Singapore, which operates Services 34 and 36, already operate on a full fleet of Citaro buses as it is the sole model of single-deck bus in its fleet. SBS Transit and SMRT Buses, which operate the remainder of bus services, have reallocated resources from other bus services to their Airport routes in compliance with this new requirements. However, SMRT Bus Service 858 continues to operate with several articulated MAN NG363F buses, which represent a capacity upgrade introduced in November 2015.
Mercedes Benz Citaro is my Top favourite bus model in Singapore!!!!
Instead of the ridiculous Citaro fleet why not LTA focus on deploy bendy buses to suppliment overcrowding svc like 53 & 858 instead?
53 can start from Bidadari Int while 53M cover the lost like between Bishan-Serangoon Ctrl and back to Bidadari Int.That way 53 can deploy 4-5 bendy buses.858 need another 2-3 bendy buses to cope.
Slowly when Buangkok Int is ready 27 can start from there and use a few Bendy buses
What a waste now, deploying all the Mercedes Benz Citaro buses to all Changi Airport Services instead of different fleet buses from 10 to 11 years ago deployment for SBS Transit and SMRT.
Should deployed different fleet of buses instead of all Mercedes Benz Citaro buses for SBS Transit and SMRT operator no idea why like that?
The announcements are played 8 times for non-T4 services and 12 times for T4 services. Twice for T1 and T3 and 4 times for T2 and T4.