Terminating Trips

Terminating Trips are short-haul trips that ply a segment of their parent route rather than the full route of their parent service. Due to the lengthy nature of selected bus routes that loop at bus interchanges, Terminating Trip services are needed to cater to specialised sectors of the route, rather than plying the entire loop back to their originating bus interchanges. This helps to better allocate resources to where they are needed. In addition, terminating trips are also used to denote trips of continuous loop bus routes that do not continue their journey beyond their originating bus interchange/terminal.

Terminating Trips can be identified by adding an alphabetical suffix at the end of their parent service number, with the letter T currently in use.

Background Information:

The earliest form of terminating trips was introduced by Trans-Island Bus Service (TIBS) for its Intra-Town services introduced in 1996. The suffix “E” was added behind the service numbers of Intra-Town Services 811, 812, 911, 912 & 913 to denote trips that would terminate at the bus interchanges in Yishun & Woodlands respectively.

On the other hand, Singapore Bus Service (SBS) utilised T plates for its Townlink services 291, 293, 307, 357, 358 & 359 to represent terminating trips for these services when they were first introduced in 1996 and 1997. T plates were not utilised for Townlink services 222, 265 & 268, as they do not operate in a continuous loop fashion.

When Service 307 was handed over to TIBS on 29 Aug 1999, Service 307E was introduced to denote trips of Service 307 that terminate at Choa Chu Kang after the completion of the South Loop. This denotation was temporarily suspended when Service 307 was amended to skip Teck Whye estate between 26 Dec 1999 and 30 Oct 2001.

When CityShopper services were introduced by SBS Transit in 2007, several of the services served the same sets of bus stops in both directions towards Orchard Road/Suntec City and returning to their respective residential estates. To differentiate between the forward and return trips of CityShopper services 575 and 576, T plates were also introduced on both services. After the withdrawal of most CityShopper services in 2008, terminating trips on the remaining 3 CityShopper services were assigned the suffix “A”, indicating that they terminate at Suntec City, but as short-trip services instead.

In 2016, the suffix “T” was first introduced by Go-Ahead Singapore for Townlink services 358 and 359 in Pasir Ris, replacing the T plates previously used by SBS Transit. In 2018, the suffix was standardised across other Townlink/Intra-Town services operated by SBS Transit and SMRT Buses, replacing the T plates and E suffix used by both operators respectively. At the same time, terminating trips of continuous loop Service 36 were also denoted with the “T” suffix.

In 2021, the usage of the suffix “T” was further extended to terminating trips of bus services that loop at bus interchanges.

It should be noted that terminating trips of other trunk services that end at bus stops are classified as Short-Trip Services instead. These include Short Trip Services 3A, 36A, 51A, 60A*, 63A, 70A, 92A, 112A, 163A, 173A, 180A, 189A, 200A, 857B, 858A, 861A, 966A, 972A, 973A, 974A, 975C, 983A, 991A & 991B.

Other special terminating trips of bus services include Services 912A & 912B, which were renumbered from Service 912E in 2017 after selected trips of the parent route were split to operate on either the East or West loop only. The usage of the suffixes “A” and “B” led to their classification as Short-Trip Services instead of terminating trips, likely for the purpose of differentiating the direction of the terminating trips. This is despite the fact that both short-trip services terminate at Woodlands Bus Interchange.

*operates when the operating hours of residential bus services are extended on eves of Public Holidays only

As mentioned in the introduction above, terminating trips are classified into two main categories:

1. “Continuous Loop” bus services, to denote that the trip ends at the originating bus interchange/terminal
2. Trunk services looping at bus interchanges, to denote that the trip ends at the looping bus interchange

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