Singapore bus arrival timing system expected to be fully restored next week

 SINGAPORE: Singapore’s public bus arrival time system, which has been disrupted since 10 January 2026, is expected to be fully restored next week, based on the latest update issued by the Land Transport Authority (LTA).

While LTA did not state a specific date for full restoration, its update on 27 January indicated that further manual firmware updates would be carried out over the coming week, suggesting that complete system recovery will extend into next week.

In its update, LTA said 85 per cent of bus arrival timings would be restored by the morning of 28 January, following the completion of manual firmware updates for about 3,000 affected buses.

The authority added that another 1,000 buses have since been identified as requiring similar updates.

These will be carried out progressively over the next week and only after service hours.

“We’ve also identified another 1,000 buses that require similar updates, which will be carried out over the next week, after service hours,” LTA said, while assuring commuters that bus services will continue operating at normal frequencies.

The timeline marks a shift from LTA’s earlier estimate on 22 January, when it said full restoration would take around four days. The extended schedule reflects additional technical work required on a larger portion of the fleet.

The Expected Time of Arrival (ETA) system provides real-time information on bus arrivals at bus stops and interchanges, and supplies data to third-party applications such as MyTransport.SG, CityMapper and Google Maps.

LTA said the system issues stemmed from a “memory cache build-up” in the on-board devices installed on buses. The problem affected around 50 per cent of the bus fleet across all operators.

According to the authority, the issue could not be resolved remotely. Technicians had to physically service the on-board systems, requiring buses to undergo manual firmware updates.

The ETA system was first reset on 21 January, after technical faults caused unusually long and inaccurate waiting times to be displayed for many bus services.

Although the system was switched back on at the start of passenger service on 23 January, LTA acknowledged that arrival timings remained partially unavailable or unreliable amid ongoing restoration and testing.

As a result of the disruption, commuters were unable to see accurate bus arrival timings on electronic displays at bus stops and interchanges. The same inaccuracies were reflected on mobile applications that rely on LTA’s data feed.

LTA said the initial issue involving missed or inaccurate bus arrival predictions was first detected on 10 January, with further inaccuracies identified over the course of that week.

Throughout the disruption, the authority maintained that buses continued to operate at their usual frequencies, despite the lack of reliable arrival information.

Netizens ridicule 'ghost bus' experiences

Nevertheless, the outage and inaccuracies caused inconvenience to many passengers.

Last week, commuters took to social media platforms to report widespread problems with bus arrival information.

On Reddit, some users said applications showed waiting times of up to 40 minutes, only for buses to arrive much earlier than predicted. Others reported missing services entirely or experiencing gaps of more than 40 minutes between listed arrivals.

One Reddit user described changing their travel behaviour due to the unreliable information, saying they resorted to private-hire cars after encountering repeated discrepancies between app estimates and actual bus arrivals.

Some commuters likened the experience to encountering “ghost buses”, where services appeared on apps but did not materialise as expected, or arrived far earlier than indicated.