The STC later phased in motorbuses in 1929 when seven Dennis G-type buses began plying between Geylang and Finlayson Green before being transferred to serve Seletar.

[4] However, the STC faced heavy competition from “mosquito-buses”, a form of informal paratransit operated using privately owned modified Ford Model T vehicles.

[5] By 1935, “mosquito-buses” were replaced with more formalised bus services with the former “mosquito-bus” owners establishing what came to be known as the Chinese bus companies; these Chinese-operated buses connected the rural parts of Singapore to the town as opposed to the inner town services of the STC.

[4] During the Japanese Occupation during the Second World War, all bus operations were briefly unified under the Syonan-si den (昭南市電), fuel shortages then led to some buses being charcoal-powered.

Under the BMA, the STC slowly returned to normal operations with much of the dilapidated bus fleet replaced with newer motorbuses of the Albion make whereas the Chinese bus companies sought after numerous British makes such as Vulcan and Bedford.

[6] SBS inherited many problems from its Chinese predecessors, including use of 14 non-standard bus models that frequently broke down, poor standards among the staff and inadequate infrastructure.

Under the supervision of the GTO, SBS completely overhauled their bus fleet with new buses of usually the Albion Viking or Mercedes-Benz OF1413 makes and introduced a rigorous maintenance regime, improving the reliability of their buses greatly whereas a new disciplinary code was introduced, reducing complaints by half from 1979 to 1983.

[8] In 1977, SBS introduced into service its first double-decker buses, the Leyland Atlantean AN68 on route 86 between Tampines Way and Shenton Way.

To ensure that SBS remain competitive, the government gave Ng Ser Miang of Singapore Shuttle Bus (SSB, one of the two operators of City Shuttle Service) the green light to set up a second operator.

This new company also won a tender in 1999 to operate the North East MRT line and the LRT systems in Sengkang and Punggol and was rebranded as SBS Transit in 2001 to reflect its multimodal nature.

In return, bus services in Choa Chu Kang and Bukit Batok were transferred to TIBS that year.

In 2006, SBS Transit introduced into service its first wheelchair accessible bus, the Volvo B9TL, on route 21 between Pasir Ris and St. Michael's.

SSB wound up in 2007 with the discontinuation of the City Shuttle Service and its fleet was inherited by SMRT Buses.

Since the early years of independence, the government has maintained its stance that heavy car usage is not sustainable for Singapore in the long term with a mixed-use of policies to both deter car usage and to push its people to take public transport.

In December 2011, the North–South MRT line suffered its first major breakdowns with 127,000 passengers affected in the worst of them.

Amid growing criticism of the existing operating model and growing strain on the bus system, the main public transport statutory board Land Transport Authority (LTA) launched the Bus Service Enhancement Programme (BSEP), with 80 new and extended bus routes and 1000 government-funded buses, involving Volvo B9TL (Wright Eclipse Gemini 2), Mercedes-Benz Citaro, Alexander Dennis Enviro500 and MAN A22 buses.

[18][19] With the BCM, bus operators introduced new buses with new features; in 2016 the first fully electric bus since the withdrawal of trolleybuses, the BYD K9, was operated by Go-Ahead Singapore whereas the first buses with USB charging ports commenced service with SMRT that year.

In addition, LTA also experimented with assistive technology for commuters with special needs on routes 139 and 141 from January to July 2019.

[28] When the COVID-19 pandemic first emerged in the beginning of 2020, the Singapore government introduced the circuit breaker measures to curb the spread of the virus.

[37][38][39][40] Between 2015 and 2022, ST Engineering embarked on various initiatives and effort to develop and trial autonomous buses.

In 2023, the company discontinued their autonomous bus development effort, citing insufficient financial resources.

[41] The Centre of Excellence for Testing & Research of Autonomous Vehicles (CETRAN) has said that autonomous vehicles remained a key part of the plan to make the city-state "car-lite", potentially reducing accidents and keeping roads safer for all.

These improvements would include purchasing more buses, introducing new bus services and increasing the frequency of existing ones, recruiting more staff and building new transport infrastructure.

Articulated buses are operated by SMRT Buses, with several units being transferred to SBS Transit and Tower Transit Singapore as part of the Seletar and Sembawang-Yishun Bus Packages respectively under the Bus Contracting Model (BCM).