For many Singaporeans, their primary mode of transportation is likely to be through MRT, since it’s relatively cheap and fast.
While the MRT system in Singapore is largely reliable, things went awry over the past 2 days.
The North-East Line (NEL) and North-South Line (NSL) faced disruption on Sunday (28 Mar) and Monday (29 Mar) respectively.
This caused inconvenience to many commuters, and LTA apologised for the delays they experienced as a result.
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) issued an apology to commuters affected by the disruptions on both, calling it “unfortunate and frustrating” when these incidents happen on consecutive days.
We will have to continue to dive into root causes whenever incidents like these happen and take firm actions.
According to LTA, the authorities will work with SMRT and Thales engineers to investigate the crux of the situation on 29 Mar — making sure such disruptions will not arise again.
Meanwhile, LTA is also working with SBS Transit on the 28 Mar issue.
Maintaining rail reliability will be a continuous task, they emphasised.
Sunday morning saw MRT services between Sengkang and Serangoon suspended due to a power fault.
SBS Transit reported that a fault occurred on the overhead catenary system located at Buangkok MRT, which supplies power to trains.
LTA updated that the affected insulator has since been replaced. In addition, there is a programme underway to replace insulators with a better designed version.
Authorities hope to have this successfully executed by June.
However, on Monday (29 Mar), many commuters en-route to work faced yet another train disruption on the north-south line.
SMRT said there was a signalling fault between Newton and City Hall MRT stations.
Consequently, this caused plenty of inconvenience to the working crowd who had to find an alternative route to work.
Unfortunately, this caused a delay of at least 45 minutes as trains had to be driven at a slower speed along the affected MRT stations.
At 10am, SMRT and Thales rebooted the system as a precautionary measure to rectify the issue. During this time, train services were unavailable.
Although train disruptions can be extremely exasperating especially when one is rushing off for an appointment – or even work – hopefully, this will be the last of many in a long time.
Let us place our faith in Singapore’s transportation system as such occurrences usually aren’t commonplace.
Hopefully, no one was too affected by the disruptions, and people managed to find an alternative route to their destination in our tiny red dot.
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Featured image courtesy of an MS News reader.
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