Debated in Parliament on 13 Apr 2015.
Er Dr Lee Bee Wah asked the Minister for Transport with regard to the recent spate of breakdowns of SMRT trains within a span of a few days (a) whether there will be a thorough review of the MRT train maintenance programme; (b) how does the frequency of our train breakdowns compare with other cities like Hong Kong or London; and (c) whether the Ministry will look at other ways of motivating SMRT to improve its service delivery, apart from just imposing hefty fines whenever there is a breakdown.
The recent spate of disruptions is regrettable, given the inconvenience it caused commuters, and also because train reliability has actually seen significant improvements in recent times. The number of delays lasting more than five minutes on the North-South and East-West Lines (NSEWLs) has steadily declined from its peak of 1.8 per 100,000 train-km in 2011 to 1.3 in 2014, an improvement of more than 25% in three years. The current delay rate is more than twice as good as New York City’s rail lines, but we can do better, as there are other systems, such as in Hong Kong, that have fewer delays.
I had instructed LTA and SMRT to get to the bottom of the recent disruptions. Meanwhile, SMRT has announced that they will thoroughly review and strengthen their maintenance regime, including setting up a Maintenance Operations Centre, increasing engineering resources and training ground staff to handle minor maintenance issues so that problems can be resolved more promptly. LTA will step up audits of SMRT’s rail maintenance resources and processes. LTA will also support with engineering expertise as part of the Joint Team’s continuing efforts to improve train reliability.
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