A Len Seng Omnibus bus (sourced from wikipedia)
Back in the 70s, 80s and 90s, before private bus companies were forced to consolidate their services and merge, as well as concede to the current Intrakota, plying the roads of Jalan Pahang, Genting Kelang, Hulu Kelang, Air Panas and Gombak was a fleet of red and white buses known simply as Len Seng.
You can still see remnants of this company, now operating under Metrobus, and its headquarters is still at Jalan Genting Kelang, just next door to the Jalan Genting Kelang Pizza Hut. The bus yard is still there and the road on which it sits leads to Air Panas, or rather more specifically, as known in the past, Kampung Pasir Air Panas.
The buses from Gombak (Nos 168, 169, 169A), Zoo Negara (170), Wardieburn Camp (166) and Air Panas (165) would ply their daily rounds from these area to the city centre, stopping at Malacca Street and Lebuh Ampang.
The HQ of Len Seng at Genting Kelang.
It faced fierce competition with the minibus in the 80s before revamp of the KL public transportation wiped out minibuses and gave birth to a handful of operators, one of which is the current Intrakota buses.
2 comments:
yeah, i used to ride LenSeng bus form Setapak area to downtown KL, but during the 80s and early 90's, i always choose minibus over big bus like LenSeng, faster ma... ofcos dangerous a bit la.
Ironic isn't it, after all the merger, upgrade etc, bus services still not much improvement, how to encourage ppl to use public transport?
Agreed, WM. I think there should be efficiency - technically there should but with monopoly, who can criticise them if the services have not improved? There is no competition and surely they will not improve because communters have no choice but to use the service, bad or not. It boils down to the enforcement and the lack of it is responsible for the sad state of affairs around us.
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