Bus Stop Renamings in NUS

Throughout the years, a few bus stops within NUS have had their names changed for various reasons, usually due to faculty movements or stop relocations.

Of note, ever since the move to the 4th-gen ISBs with stop announcements in 2015 onwards, the bus stop name changes became less frequent, due to the cost of re-recording the announcements as well as re-programming the bus GPS systems which are linked to them.

Most stop renamings these days are also associated with the need to rename the bus stop in LTA’s systems, if public buses stop there.

In this piece, I’ll list out the major changes that affect bus stops still surviving today, or bus stops which, under their old names, were fairly well-known. Note that the route numbers in parentheses indicate services stopping at the bus stops currently.

University Hall move

University Hall was originally located in the Faculty of Engineering. It shifted to its current location along Lower Kent Ridge Road, completed in June 2005.

The names of the bus stops were changed on either September 5 or 6 of that year. I have luck and the Wayback Machine to thank for this knowledge, as they coincidentally crawled the page on both the 4th and the 6th.

The University Hall bus stop in Engin serving B and C at the time was renamed to “E3A”, while the pair of bus stops along Lower KR Road was renamed from “Football Field” and “Opp Football Field” to “Opp University Hall” (95, A2, C, D2) and “University Hall” (95, A1, C, D2) respectively. This change is singlehandedly reflected in the old and new stop listings for Service C.

The E3A stop was eventually removed from the network due to the long detour made and tight clearance, when NUS standardised to 12-metre buses.

In the public bus network, the current UHall stops were actually numbered 18319 “Opp Sheares Hall” and 18311 “Block S12”, although Sheares had actually moved away to their current location in 2002.

18319 was renamed to “Opp University Hall” in 2009, while 18311 was unchanged.

Carpark 12 construction

In late 2006, work began to construct a carpark outside the Hon Sui Sen Memorial Library. This required the existing HSSML bus stop to be taken over and closed, so the bus stop was relocated to the sheltered area below BIZ2 and itself renamed “BIZ2” (A1, B1, D1, BTC1).

Law vacating CP13

The bus stop in Carpark 13 originally served the Law and Business schools. It was originally named “Car Park 13 @ BIZ/Law”, and situated on Law Link.

The bus stop was renamed to “Car Park 13 @ BIZ” in August 2006 in preparation for Law School leaving. Law Link was renamed Computing Drive in January 2009. The bus stop remained under this name until around July 2010, where it was renamed to “COM2” (A1, A2, D1) alongside SoC completing its “invasion”.

More can be found at the upcoming separate article on this bus stop.

SoC vacating FoS

School of Computing was originally located at Science, before it expanded into its own faculty at the CP13 area. As such, one of the bus stops at Science was originally known as “School of Computing 1”, after the building behind it.

SoC shifted fully to CP13 in 2010, but this stop name remained until late 2012, where it was renamed “S17” (A2, C, D2) — the original name of the building SoC1 took over, which had by then naturally reverted.

At the same time, the public bus stop was renamed from 18309 “Computing Soc1 Bldg” to “Block S17” in conjunction.

Offices shift to Ventus

The NUS offices were originally located north of Raffles Hall. The stop in front of them was named Office of Estate Development (OED), and served Engineering students as well as the office staff.

In 2011, work began on a new building for the offices, which were moving away to make way for the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum and a bridge across the AYE to UTown.

The new building, to be called Ventus, housed the Office of the Vice President (Campus Infrastructure), OED, OFM, OCA, OES, OSHE and UTown Development Office. Currently, these offices are all under the umbrella of the UCI. Construction of Ventus ran from June 2011 to August 2014.

In August 2013, the OED bus stop was renamed from “OED” to “Museum” (151, A2, C, D1, D2) to reflect the move. The bus announcer lady pronounces it with two syllables, which would irk me, but according to linguistic descriptivism, it is catching on as a pronunciation so yeah.

The public bus stop at that site, 16161, was actually renamed from “Opp NUS Raffles Hall” to “NUS Museum” earlier than that in mid-2012.

In early 2014, “Opp LT13” was renamed to “Ventus (Opp LT13)” (A2, B2, D1).

UHC relocation

In 1981, the University Health Centre moved from its previous location at BTC to Yusof Ishak House. The clinic facilities were shifted across the road to their current location near the Staff Club and MPSH area in 2009.

In spite of that, the bus stops around it continued to be known as “Staff Club” and “Opp Staff Club” until early 2014, where they were renamed “UHC” (A2, C, D2) and “Opp UHC” (A1, C, D2). Staff Club had always been, and is still, there; the reason for the delay is most likely the public bus stop renaming as mentioned below.

For the public bus network, the bus stops were originally known as 18329 and 18321, both “Kent Ridge Hall”. In 2013, they got renamed to “Staff Club” and “Opp Staff Club” in line with the ISB name, and in 2014 they were renamed to their current name again together with the ISB renaming. Again, note that Kent Ridge Hall had moved to their current location back in 2002.

Opposite EA?

When Kent Vale Bus Terminal was closed in 2010, the B and C routes were diverted to end the route at a public bus stop along Clementi Road known as 16159 “NUS Fac of Engrg”.

NUS decided to designate it internally as “Opposite Block EA”, even though it was on the same side of Clementi Road as EA. I was confused by this for a while, until I realised they pretty much meant “opposite” in the sense of across the small Engineering Drive 1! In July 2016, it was renamed to “Opp. EA”. Not that it helped much.

Thankfully, in January 2017, NUS finally realised how confusing it was, and renamed the bus stop to simply “EA” (33, 96, 183, 188, B2, C, BTC2).

LT29

The bus stop at LT29 was renamed to LT27 (95, A1, C, D2) fairly recently in 2018, for unknown reasons. It was near to both LTs. I suspect it might have been to harmonise with the public bus stop name, which referenced the Lim Seng Tjoe Building (LT27).

Lim Seng Tjoe was the chairman of the Ban Hin Leong group; the LT was named after him in recognition of his 3.68-million dollar contribution to the Universities Endowment Fund. LT27 was renamed after him in 1995, and the public bus stop 18301 in front of it was always named “Lim Seng Tjoe Bldg (LT27)”.

Computer Centre renaming

On 1 June 2017, the NUS Computer Centre was renamed to NUS Information Technology. The bus stop at that location was correspondingly renamed in 2018 to “IT (Opp Central Library)” (95, 96, 151, A2, B1, B2, D1). This ended the era of many a student complaining about crowds at “ComCen” or “CCE”. It didn’t end the crowds.

AS7 to AS5

This is the one I am completely and thoroughly confused by. I previously assumed that the LT13 and AS7 bus stops were originally located within Carpark 14 (Arts Link) off the main road. They are now located on the main Kent Ridge Drive; LT13 is a bus bay while AS7 is a small stop along the main road marked only by a pole.

In front of LT13, there is a large paved area that could be a bus stop. However, there is no such area visible near AS7. I tried to look at old maps to see where the bus stop was located, but got wildly inconsistent results that made it look as if whoever was in charge of labelling bus stops in NUS simply dropped a few pins around. Sometimes it was inside the carpark, sometimes not. Weirdly, regardless it was always nearer to AS5!

In any case, while the LT13 bus stop has always been named that, the AS7 bus stop was renamed to “AS5” (A1/B1/D1/BTC1) in 2018, better reflecting its location.

Any information on the historical location of these two bus stops is greatly appreciated.

2019 Edit: So someone said that the stop might have been named “AS7” at first, because “AS5” in print looks like “ASS”, and whoever renamed it didn’t take that into consideration. Well, I can’t argue with that.

PGP Bungalows

Prince George’s Park is home to many old houses. There were originally four bus stops between PGP and Biz.

On A1, heading towards PGP, the stops were originally “Opp House 12” and “House 7”. Going the other way on A2 from PGP, the stops were “Between House 14 and House 15” (not kidding!) and “House 12”.

Leading up to 2018, the area closer to Biz was redeveloped, and the bus stops were renamed. “House 7” also disappeared mysteriously from the network.

The stop with the really long name, which had by then been simplified to “Between House 14 & 15”, was now just “House 15” (A2), thank goodness.

But just when you think we rid ourselves of our longest stop name, House 12 had been taken over by the Technology Centre for Offshore and Marine, Singapore, a spanking new building. So its bus stop was renamed “TCOMS” (A2, D2), and the one opposite it was renamed “Opp TCOMS” (A1, D2).

That’s what you see on paper, though. The bus announcer reads the whole name. Next stop, Opposite Technology Centre for Offshore and Marine, Singapore…

Yeah, the bus has usually left the stop by the time she’s done.

PGP Residences to PGP Foyer

In 2023, signage at the foyer of PGPR, where ISBs stop, was updated from “Prince George’s Park Residences” to reflect the new makeup of residences there – PGPR, LightHouse, Helix House and Pioneer House. As such, the bus stop previously known as “PGPR” was renamed to “PGP Foyer” (A2, D2, K), according to network maps dated 24 February 2023.