Singapore Buses route 178

Service 178 is a supplementary inter-town route serving between the housing estates of Woodlands, Bukit Panjang, Bukit Batok, Jurong East and Boon Lay. Much of its route plies through industrial areas (such as those around Woodlands Road, Corporation Road and International Business Park), hence demand is strongly skewed towards peak hours. It shares the Woodlands – Boon Lay termini with 187, while plying a longer route.

This route experiences very low off-peak demand and operates at borderline QoS standards. Its low frequency is attributed to the presence of multiple duplicating routes and little demand from industrial estate portions. It is believed that this route is highly unprofitable and SMRT’s requests to convert it to a peak-hour route was turned down by the PTC. Despite this, it encounters considerable demand between Woodlands Int and Kranji MRT during weekday morning peak hours due to industries at Marsiling Industrial Estate and Woodlands Road, and shortworking trip 178A was introduced to cope with the additional demand.

During periods of heavy congestion around Woodlands Checkpoint, buses many be diverted to skip parts of Woodlands Road and Woodlands Centre, going via Woodlands Avenue 3 instead.

Formerly a Singapore Bus Service (SBS) route since the 1970s, the route was transferred to Trans-Island Bus Service (TIBS) in 1983 and has been operated by SMRT ever since. High capacity articulated / double-deck buses are not deployed due to insufficient demand.

It originally uses Nissan Diesel U31RCN till it retired in 2011.