by CMB did not have the required engine power. Finally CMB ordered 40 36-foot single-deck buses to shift the working crowds, after considering their early success in Africa. Those single-deckers, however, suffered from the same problem as their African siblings: They were too long, with a 10-foot overhang, 22-foot wheelbase and no upper deck to provide additional strength. The buses literally bent and their tail ends swung up and down. They were used for no longer than 10 years before being cut down to standard 30-foot length and re-bodied. In 1963, China Motor Bus introduced the first double-decker bus (a Dennis Loline III) on Hong Kong Island, later CMB introduced more double-deckers (Guy Arabs) on routes serving the northern coast of the island. At that time, even with larger buses and increased ridership, costs were still high. On KMB buses, there were up to four people employed on each bus – a driver, one or two conductors to collect the fares and the last, the gateman, supervised boarding and alighting by opening and closing the gates at each end. CMB buses had two crew on each bus, with the fare collector and the door-keeper being the same person. This level of manning was soon deemed unacceptable and the bus companies replaced manual doors and gates or open platforms with pneumatic doors, which eliminated the need for the gateman. However, there were no layoffs, as both bus companies were expanding and the surplus staff were soon retrained and deployed on new routes. 1967 Riot and the PLB Detour The outbreak of 1967 riots halted the bus services because of the intimidation of the front-line operational staff in the latter part of 1967. Services slowly returned to previous levels in early 1968, but this interruption had given the opportunity for dual-purpose vans to flourish and provide illegal – but at that time, necessary – public passenger services, which were then later to be legalised by a weak Transport Department and become the Public Light Bus. In 1968, two new towns, Kwun Tong and Tsuen Wan, started flourishing and KMB extended its service by opening a new route 40 to and from these. Early 1970s As the demand of bus service was increasing and production of front-engine buses in UK was terminated, CMB and KMB acquired a number of second-hand buses such as Leyland Titans and Leyland Atlanteans from UK in the early