Transparency and swift fixing of faults in the East-West Line disruption. That is the PAP way.

16/10/2024

IMMEDIATE FIXING of faults. Then a thorough fact-finding. And an incident report to Parliament and the people of Singapore. 

These all came from our PAP Government and our political office holders after the September MRT disruptions along the East-West Line. These are the actions of a Party that takes its duty to Singaporeans seriously, and that values transparency. This is how we keep Singapore’s world-class rail system resilient, when events invariably go off-track.  

In particular, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) immediately deployed more than 80 buses and hundreds of additional staff to assist on the ground. These efforts helped get commuters where they needed to go. They got the train and tracks properly fixed so that services resumed safely well within a week.  

There were also thorough checks of train components. A dislodged axle box had been the cause of the track damage on 25 September. That night, LTA and SMRT checked the axle boxes of all remaining trains from the same generation to make sure they were fit for service. They were indeed. 

Even now, two fact-finding investigations are at work. As Minister for Transport Chee Hong Tat shared in Parliament (15 Oct), one involves the LTA and a five-member multinational Expert Advisory Panel. Their purpose is to find out why the axle box failed, as well as how the incident was handled.  

The other is an independent safety investigation by the Ministry of Transport’s (MOT) Transport Safety Investigation Bureau.             

“I seek Members’ understanding that more details will be shared when the investigations are completed,” said Minister Chee. “We expect the investigations to be completed in the next few months, and the findings will be released publicly. LTA will mete out penalties if the investigations reveal lapses.”    

Minister Chee had been making a Ministerial Statement and answering questions from MPs in Parliament about the train disruptions.  

He also shared further information with Parliament, and Singaporeans. For example, operators have electronic condition-monitoring systems on trains as well as track-scanning vehicles which together help pick up defects. There are redundancies like back-up power sources for emergencies.  

Regular maintenance, based how many miles a train has run as well as its age, is also part of how operators keep MRT trains running smoothly, shared Minister Chee. The LTA has a strict set of Maintenance Performance Standards, audited by independent external assessors, to ensure this. 

“If we look at the spending over the past few years by the two [train] operators, both of them have not cut back on maintenance,” added Minister Chee. “They have both continued to focus on maintenance and on building up the engineering and technical expertise …That is something which will remain a priority for LTA and the operators.”       

Minister Chee’s comments come at a point when the PAP Government’s holistic train maintenance and safety efforts have helped revitalise the MRT system into one of the world’s best.   

The Mean Kilometres Between Failure (MKBF), which is the global reliability benchmark for cities, was 67,000 train-km for Singapore in 2012.  

Today, each of Singapore’s MRT lines reaches at least 1.04 million MKBF. The East-West Line in particular reaches 2.03 million MKBF. These represent a marked improvement in rail reliability compared to a decade ago.