Debated in Parliament on 17 Aug 2015.
Mr Lim Biow Chuan asked the Minister for Transport whether LTA has reviewed and approved the contingency plans by SMRT to provide alternative transport whenever there is a breakdown in the train services.
The Senior Minister of State for Transport (Mrs Josephine Teo)(for the Minister for Transport): Mdm Speaker, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) requires the rail operators to have Rail Incident Management Plans (RIMPs) which set out their responses to train incidents and the measures they will take to mitigate the inconvenience caused to commuters. These measures include regular provision of information to affected commuters, free boarding of public buses and bus bridging services at affected stations. These plans are
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approved by LTA and are regularly reviewed and enhanced.
For a disruption on the scale of the 7 July 2015 incident, which involved the entire North-South and East-West Lines during the evening peak, the operators' Rail Incident Management Plans were not adequate and it is understandable why many affected commuters were unhappy with the management of the incident. The capacity of alternative travel connections between the heartlands and the city needed considerable strengthening and would have required significantly more resources beyond the Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (SMRT)'s to mitigate the impact.
Therefore, following the incident, LTA has reviewed the measures and worked with both bus operators to focus on an emergency ramp-up of capacity on bus connections. In the event of a similar rail incident, we will boost the capacity for regular trunk services calling at affected Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) stations connecting the city and the heartlands. Depending on the scale of the rail disruption, a number of buses will be diverted from other bus services with lower demand to enhance these identified services. The operating hours of Government-contracted City Direct Services can also be extended.
Let me now turn to bus bridging which stakes commuters at affected stations to the unaffected stations so that they can continue their journey. For a large-scale disruption where bus bridging cannot be effectively implemented at all stations, a special bridging plan will be implemented to serve commuters living in major towns in the northern, western and eastern parts of Singapore. This will allow commuters in the city to travel via alternative MRT lines to key interchange stations, such as Bishan, Paya Lebar and Buona Vista, and subsequently use the special bridging buses for onward travel to towns, such as Ang Mo Kio, Woodlands, Tampines and Choa Chu Kang. This special bridging plan works similarly in the reverse direction.
By doing so, commuters affected by a large-scale disruption will have two options to travel between the city and the heartlands through: firstly, trunk services running at increased frequencies and expanded capacity; or secondly, a combination of alternative MRT lines and special bridging services.
LTA and the operators have worked out the arrangements and the improved contingency plan was put in place recently, about a month after the incident.
Mr Lim Biow Chuan.
Mdm Speaker, may I ask the Senior Minister of State: on the event in question on 7 July, the feedback given was that the stations were quite
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chaotic. Many of the commuters did not know what was happening and they did not know where to go or what bridging buses were provided. If, indeed, LTA has worked with the transport operators about how to manage a rail disruption again, then why was the situation not better managed? Having said that, would there be better management, better practices for a similar kind of breakdowns? Would there also be contingency plans to better manage announcements as well as crowd control at the stations? At the end of the day, many commuters accept that trains, like all mechanical things, do break down. But they want to know, "What do I do next as a commuter? Do I get stuck in the station?" Or for commuters who are going to the MRT stations, they have to know, "Do I even go there?" How do we prevent people from going to the train stations when the system has broken down?
Mdm Speaker, indeed, the operators, together with LTA, do have Rail Incident Management Plans. But I think it is fair to say that for the incident that occurred on 7 July, the scale of it was not something that they planned adequately for. That is why the management of the incident fell short by commuters' standards.
What we want to do is to improve on those contingency plans, whether it is in relation to the bus connections or other travel connections that the commuters really want. In terms of the information, those areas are still being looked into as well. Whilst we are continuously looking into those areas, the contingency plans relating to the bus connections have been firmed up and they have been put in place.
Mr Cedric Foo.
A contingency plan is one way to make sure that we minimise inconveniences to commuters but a breakdown on the scale of 7 July is really so large that it is probably better to make investment to try and prevent such a massive breakdown, through redundancy or isolating breakdowns to certain segments of the track, rather than to invest in an entire large-scale contingency plan. Not only have they got to find the buses, they have to find the drivers and so on. Can the Senior Minister of State comment on that?
Mdm Speaker, I thank the Member Mr Cedric Foo for raising that point. Indeed, quite apart from focusing on corrective maintenance, preventive maintenance is equally important, if not more so, particularly as the system is no longer the new system that we had years ago. That is an area of work that will continue to occupy the LTA as well as the operators' attention for quite some time to come.
At the same time, if and when an incident were to happen, it is reasonable for commuters to expect that the management of it ought to be up to mark. That is also an area
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that we want to make sure that we improve on. So, both of these have to proceed in parallel.
Mr Lim Biow Chuan.
Mdm Speaker, I just wanted to put this to the Senior Minister of State again. I asked whether practice runs are conducted, just like army training. You practise and practise and practise to make sure that if, indeed, it happens again, the repercussions are better dealt with. Do you have contingency plans, do you practise the situation where the system breaks down again and there are thousands of commuters in the stations, and what do you do with them?
It is not just in land transport that there are exercises being conducted on a regular basis. In air transport and in sea transport, we do it, too. I think we are not the only agencies which do that. In other Ministries, there are also tests of contingency planning.
But there is nothing quite like the real thing, where the commuters' reactions are not entirely predictable and their patterns of travel are also not entirely as you expected before. This tested the strength of our plans and we identified areas that we ourselves think ought to be improved further. So, that is something that we will put our attention on doing.
As I had mentioned earlier in my reply, the incident happened about a month ago. We wasted no time in making sure that we looked into how onward travel connections can be made by affected commuters. We thought that one area of opportunity and one area that we can do much better in when it comes to large-scale disruptions are in making sure that the capacity and frequency of the trunk services which can provide alternative connections for the commuters are quickly ramped up.
How do you mobilise the resources to do that? We have worked it out with the operators and that plan is in effect.
Mr Zaqy Mohamad. Last question.
I thank the Senior Minister of State for the clarifications earlier on.
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There are provisions for the resources available to these Government contracted operators and they can also be brought to bear in an incident of this nature.
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