Train service reliability has dropped over the 12-month period ending in September this year, with the East-West Line (EWL) showing the biggest decline.
These sobering figures were released by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) on 22 Nov, in its latest Performance of Rail Service Reliability report.
The statistics are based on a 12-month moving average of mean kilometres between failures (MKBF), which is an engineering measure of rail reliability.
According to the report, MRT trains ran 1.798 million train-km without disruptions of more than five minutes between October 2023 and September 2024.
This is lower than the 2.077 million train-km recorded between delays in 2023.
It’s also lower than the 2.089 million train-km recorded in 2022 and the 1.994 million train-km recorded in 2021.
Among the individual lines, the Downtown Line (DTL) was the best performer by far, with 8.112 million train-km travelled between delays.
The Circle Line (CCL) was the worst performer, going just 1.04 million train-km between delays, a slight dip from 2023.
However, all the lines’ reliability remained more or less steady except for the EWL, which plummeted to 2.027 million train-km between delays, from a high of 3.363 million train-km last year.
While the EWL was the second-best performing line in 2023, it has now been overtaken by the North-East Line.
Source: Land Transport Authority
Notably, this came after a six-day disruption to the EWL at the end of September that affected about 2.6 million passengers.
The Thomson-East Coast Line was not included in the report as the line will open fully only in 2026.
Unfortunately, the reliability of the LRT network has also dropped steeply, with an overall MKBF of 358,000 car-km between delays, down from 546,000 car-km in 2023.
Source: Land Transport Authority
The Sengkang-Punggol LRT performed better but took a sharp hit, plunging to an MKBF of 612,000 car-km from 1.217 million car-km in 2023.
This was still higher than the Bukit Panjang LRT (BPLRT), though, which slid to 189,000 car-km between delays, from 248,000 car-km in 2023.
Source: Land Transport Authority
In October, a BPLRT train became “immobilised” on the track, resulting in a five-hour service disruption and train service ending about 1.5 hours earlier than normal.
Finally, the number of service delays may also be on an upward trend on the MRT network.
There have already been six service delays of more than 30 minutes across the entire MRT network in the first nine months of this year.
This is compared with five for the whole of 2023, seven in 2022 and just three in 2021.
Source: Land Transport Authority
Two of the service delays this year happened on the EWL, while three were on the CCL and the remaining one was on the DTL.
The number of service delays on the LRT network has been more or less steady, with three in the first three quarters of the year compared with three in the whole of last year.
Also read: Train service reliability should not determine public transport fares: Chee Hong Tat
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