Even as a high-level, six-week inquiry has begun into what caused the December train breakdowns that affected over 200,000 commuters, Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew said yesterday that a team of experts from the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and SMRT has begun studying how to rectify existing faults in the train network, as well as to spot potential future problems.
This comes after the North-South East-West and Circle lines saw four disruptions in six days - once during the evening peak period on April 13, and three more on consecutive mornings last Monday to Wednesday.
Making his first comments on those incidents, Mr Lui said the spate of “serious disruptions” in the short span was “not acceptable”.
“It has inconvenienced many, many commuters greatly. It has angered many commuters, and rightly so, because they expect and deserve a much more reliable service than what has been delivered over the course of the past week,” he said.
Mr Lui revealed that he called in SMRT’s interim chief executive Tan Ek Kia and chairman Koh Yong Guan the day after the series of disruptions to tell them he was “gravely concerned”, and stressed to them that “taking a ‘business as usual’ approach was not sufficient”.
He also asked them to ensure that “we are not only prepared to deal with a series of defects that we are seeing today, but also … for what may well be coming up in the years ahead”.
While there are bound to be breakdowns for a network with the number of trains, trips and passengers like ours, Mr Lui said “the most important thing is to try and minimise the number of such incidents, and as much as possible, to make sure that the serious disruptions … are kept to the barest minimum”.
Further improvements on incident management - for instance, in disseminating information to commuters in a more timely manner, and briefing bus drivers properly on their routes for the bridging services - also ought to be made, he said.
“I think what we want to do is improve the reliability of the system. You regain confidence only after a sustained period where you have minimum disruptions of this nature.”
To that end, Mr Lui said the LTA and SMRT experts will ask manufacturers what possible faults and problems could arise in ageing trains so that the builders of our train system can better identify and prepare for “potential vulnerability areas, potential faults that may not even be surfacing to the extent that we would see in the future”.
Mr Lui said SMRT has told him it is already trying to identify the most common faults associated with the trains, as well as the track and signalling system. This is because these two areas “would comprise the vast majority of the faults that we’ve experienced, both over the course of the week, as well as in the recent past”.
SMRT is also taking steps to completely replace components, instead of just replacing parts when they break down, he added. The train operator will call for a press conference this week to share details of what it has been doing.
