Train delay on North-South Line, second disruption in a week
Published: 6:42 PM, August 31, 2017
Updated: 7:02 PM, August 31, 2017
SINGAPORE – Commuters travelling on the North-South Line (NSL) were affected by a service delay caused a train fault during the peak hour commute on Thursday (Aug 31).
In a tweet at 6.20pm, rail operator SMRT told commuters to add 25 minutes to their train travel time from Jurong East to Yishun.
The delay lasted about 40 minutes before train services resumed at around 7pm.
SMRT added that the fault was not linked to the new signalling project.
At around 6:40pm, the additional travel time was reduced to 15 minutes before services resumed at around 7pm.
continue reading here :
http://www.todayonline.com/singapore...isruption-week
Singapore MRT IS SO GOOOOD
NSL trains delayed between Jurong East, Yishun; not due to new signalling system, SMRT says
31 Aug 2017 07:55PM (Updated: 31 Aug 2017 08:00PM)
SINGAPORE: Evening rush-hour passengers travelling between Jurong East and Yishun on Thursday (Aug 31) ahead of the long weekend were held up by a train fault on the North-South Line.
The fault was not linked to the new signalling system that had caused a number of recent delays on the train line, operator SMRT said in a tweet at about 6.20pm.
Commuter Lee Jia Fang told Channel NewsAsia that she had boarded a train at Yew Tee, only for it to be stuck at the next station, Kranji, for 20 minutes.
She added that she eventually left the station to take a bus to her destination, Marsiling, but that it took another 10 minutes for the bus to arrive.
Ms Lee said that the delay held up many people who, like her, had been on their way to Johor Bahru.
SMRT said free regular bus services were available from Woodlands to Yishun. In a series of tweets, the operator kept commuters informed of the delay, which it said would add as much as 25 minutes of travel time.
Read more at
Train fault on Circle Line causes delay of up to 30 minutes on Monday morning
Published: 10:03 AM, September 11, 2017
Updated: 10:51 AM, September 11, 2017
SINGAPORE – Commuters travelling on the Circle Line during the morning rush hour experienced train delays of up to 30 minutes due to a train fault on Monday (Sept 11) morning.
At 9.25am, rail operator SMRT tweeted: “Pls add 15mins additional travelling time from #PayaLebar to #BuonaVista due to a train fault.”
The delay extended to 30 minutes at 9.40am.
SMRT said: “Pls add 30mins additional travelling time from #PayaLebar to #BuonaVista due to a train fault.”
Twitter user Zecline Lin was travelling to work on the circle line when her train stopped at Botanic Gardens at 9:07am. She said she was still “stuck at Marymount station” at 10:04am, adding that there were no bus services provided.
continue reading here :
http://www.todayonline.com/singapore...monday-morning
Singapore MRT service is so GOOD . Always breakdown . This only proves that those in charge do not know how to solve the problem . And SMRT CEO is still sitting in his seat. He must be more powerful than the PAP .
NSL resignalling could be completed by end-Nov: Khaw
By Kenneth Cheng
Published: 3:06 PM, September 11, 2017
Updated: 3:53 PM, September 11, 2017
SINGAPORE — The Government is pushing for resignalling work on SMRT’s North-South Line (NSL) to wrap up by the end of November, slightly ahead of the original schedule before year’s end.
Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan revealed the timeline in Parliament on Monday (Sept 11) when he was responding to a question by Member of Parliament (Nee Soon GRC) Lee Bee Wah on the progress of the resignalling project, and how much more time was needed before the new system stabilises.
Mr Khaw said there was “no reason” that this target cannot be met, and new software put in place in July has been “very promising”. Noting that the project was entering its “last leg” of testing, Mr Khaw said: “If we can complete it by the end of November, it would have been quite an achievement.”
Trials on the new signalling system have been expanded progressively, starting from March when it was put through the paces during the final hour of weekday services to its being tested on Sundays from April. Full-day trials began since late May.
Plans are also in the pipeline to roll out the system to the East-West Line, which is also run by rail operator SMRT. Right now, the new stretch of the line between Joo Koon and Tuas West runs on the new signalling system.
Mr Khaw said he hopes the experience with the NSL would come in handy when the system is extended to the rest of the East-West Line, and that stabilising this would not take as much time as the NSL.
Mr Khaw stressed that unlike “greenfield” projects such as the Downtown Line 3, the NSL was a functioning train line which cannot be closed for testing, and the resignalling project was further compounded by the fact that the signalling system is 30 years old.
Trains, for instance, take a great deal of time to be “calibrated and recalibrated”, he added, noting that metro systems around the world faced the same challenges when undergoing resignalling work.
Several trip-ups have surfaced on the NSL in recent months due to the resignalling work. Towards the end of June, for instance, train delays for four straight days drew the ire of commuters.
continue reading here :
http://www.todayonline.com/singapore...d-end-nov-khaw
Totally unacceptable . Thousands of workers will be late for work .
Faulty train with emergency brakes applied disrupts Circle Line service for over an hour
Published 6 hours ago
Christopher Tan
Senior Transport Correspondent
SINGAPORE - Emergency brakes applied for an unknown reason are understood to have rendered a Circle Line train inoperable near Marymount station during the morning peak period on Monday (Sept 11).
The faulty train had to be pushed out by another train.
The episode - just two days after a track fault disrupted service on the Bukit Panjang LRT for some six hours on Saturday morning - affected thousands of commuters on their way to work and school.
According to the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board, a number of N-level exams were held on Monday morning.
Circle Line operator SMRT first tweeted about the fault at 9.25am, warning of journeys taking 15 minutes longer. Later, it revised this to 30 minutes.
But National University of Singapore student J. R. Tan’s journey from Bartley station to NUS took nearly an hour longer. After getting stuck in a train that was crawling and stopping, the second-year student got off at Botanic Gardens station and took a bus.
The 22-year-old said she missed two-thirds of a lecture. “When the train stalled at Caldecott, they announced that it was going to be a five-minute delay. Then 30 minutes later, they said it was going to be a 30-minute delay.
“If they had said 30 minutes from the start, I would have gotten off and taken the bus, and maybe made it in time for my lecture.”
Across the network, crowds packed station platforms.
Past 10am, SMRT tweeted to say service was recovering gradually.
continue reading here :
http://www.straitstimes.com/singapor...rvice-for-over
Sure or not faulty emergency brakes ?
New line and new trains ?
How often emergency brakes were used ?
You think we are stupid or what ?
Rail workers deserve cheers, not jeers, says Khaw
By Kenneth Cheng
Published: 4:00 AM, September 12, 2017
Updated: 7:55 AM, September 12, 2017
SINGAPORE — Less than two months ago, he took a swipe at the mainstream media’s coverage of train delays linked to trials of the North-South Line’s (NSL) new signalling system. He was roundly criticised by commuters and the online community, who argued that the press was reporting the sentiments on the ground.
Yesterday, Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan said that he did so because he felt for the rail workers who invest “so much effort, heart, sweat and tears” into the project.
“The minimum they hope (is that) people would cheer them on, rather than jeer (at) them,” he said in Parliament, in response to a question by Member of Parliament Melvin Yong.
Mr Yong, who is also the National Transport Workers’ Union’s executive secretary, had asked Mr Khaw for an assurance that rail workers’ well-being would continue to be a top priority, as the country aims for high standards of train operations.
Mr Khaw told the House he spends much time with workers “in the trenches, within the tunnels”, and also buys them durians and curry puffs “each time there’s something to celebrate”. Such small gestures made a difference not only to the crew, but also to him.
“I want to satisfy myself that people are not lazing around (and) giving excuses, but (really) putting their hearts and souls into their project, and they do,” he said.
He added that staff morale is key in multi-year rail projects: “If you’re able to keep morale high, I think the success possibility will be high.”
In July, Mr Khaw hit out at the mainstream media midway through a speech at a forum, saying news reports were “unfair to the teams … working their guts out on this re-signalling project”, and that the press had “magnified the problem unfairly”.
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Expect more reliable North-South, East-West Lines with power rail replaced: LTA, SMRT
By Aqil Haziq Mahmud
@AqilHaziqCNA
12 Sep 2017 09:30AM (Updated: 12 Sep 2017 09:50AM)
SINGAPORE: The project to replace the power rail on Singapore’s oldest MRT lines – the North-South East-West Lines (NSEWL) – has been completed.
The last section of power rail was replaced near Ang Mo Kio MRT station on Aug 15 after a two-year effort to replace about 180km of aluminium-stainless steel composite rails, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and SMRT said in a news release on Tuesday (Sep 12).
The completion of the project is expected to reduce power rail faults on the NSEWL, LTA and SMRT said. “The design of the power rail system was also improved by reducing the distance between brackets and rail assembly claws for better support,” it added.
The completion of the third rail replacement project comes more than half a year after the conclusion of the sleeper replacement project in December last year.
The third major renewal effort, re-signalling works – which started in 2012 to allow trains to run at shorter intervals, is expected to be completed next year.
Read more at
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/...r-rail-9207546
The only thing I expect is more disruption of services . It seemed to be getting worse and worse .
Reliability on North-South, East-West lines to get much better by 2019: Khaw
By Kenneth Cheng
Published: 11:35 PM, September 12, 2017
Updated: 12:08 AM, September 13, 2017
SINGAPORE — With work to replace the power-supplying “third rail” on the North-South and East-West lines (NSEWL) finished, efforts to overhaul Singapore’s oldest MRT lines are a third complete. Hence, commuters will be able to see vast reliability improvements by 2019, Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan said on Tuesday (Sept 12).
The remaining major projects for the two lines will wrap up by 2024, but even before that, trains could travel one million train-km before hitting short delays by 2020.
This is more than three times higher than the 300,000 train-km target set for this year, measured by mean kilometre between failure (MKBF), or the average distance trains run between delays of more than five minutes.
Mr Khaw, who is also Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure, said he was “probably reckless” in promising the improvements when he took on the portfolio in 2015. However, he was “truly confident” now as he has turned around the culture of “finger-pointing” among the various parties involved in the rail network’s operations.
He was speaking at Bishan Depot on Tuesday to mark the completion of the NSEWL’s third-rail replacement, the second major project to spruce up the 30-year-old train lines, after work to replace timber track-sleepers with concrete ones finished last December.
Work began in September 2015 to replace 180km of composite aluminium-and-stainless-steel rails, and wrapped up in mid-August.
The project is expected to minimise faults linked to the third rail and raise the lines’ reliability.
The third rail, which feeds electricity into passing trains to power components such as motors and lights, has been blamed for several train service trip-ups over the years.
For instance, a massive breakdown on the NSEWL in 2015, which hit an estimated 250,000 commuters, was found to have stemmed from problems with the third rail’s insulation.
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‘Disconnect’ between rail reliability numbers and public perception: Transport Minister
By Kenneth Cheng
Published: 4:00 AM, September 13, 2017
Updated: 8:19 AM, September 13, 2017
SINGAPORE — Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan yesterday acknowledged a “disconnect” between rail reliability numbers, which showed the Republic making significant strides, and the picture seen by journalists and Singaporeans.
He attributed this to a conflation of two separate missions that the transport authorities are grappling with: Raising the reliability of existing MRT lines and pursuing new rail projects, such as the Thomson-East Coast Line.
Recalling the authorities’ release of reliability figures several months ago, Mr Khaw described the disconnect as “very understandable”.
“‘You said you’ve improved reliability, MKBF (mean kilometre between failure) doubled, tripled, and so on, but I still face breakdowns, delays, this and that’,” he said.
Mr Khaw noted that new projects were being “superimposed” on the mission to increase reliability on existing rail networks.
“Life, of course, would be simpler if we just can do one thing at a time … but we don’t have that luxury of time,” he said, adding that both missions carried different benchmarks.
On rail reliability, Mr Khaw said the MKBF was a very good standard measurement used globally. “If you want to be fair and objective in studying and measuring what we’ve been doing (over) the last two years, it’s first important that we recognise there are separate missions, separate projects, separate teams … and we should judge the projects in that manner,” he said.
In the first half of this year, Singapore’s MRT network recorded an overall MKBF of 393,000 train-km before hitting delays of more than five minutes. This was better than the Government’s target of 300,000 train-km for the year, and more than double the 174,000 train-km recorded last year.
continue reading here :
http://www.todayonline.com/singapore...lic-perception
Dear honourable Mr Khaw you still have not mentioned how you are going to solve the current problems that is affecting thousands of commuters every time there is a major disruption of mrt services on the NSL & EWL and now even the new Circle Line . The commuters expect at least for your world class mrt system to provide timely and efficient transport of commuters from their destinations or have you forgotten what is the core function of your world class mrt system supposed to be .
“Waterfall” spotted at Pioneer MRT station due to heavy rain, water leaks also found in train cabin
This is not the first reported incident of water leakage at MRT stations.
By Yeo Kaiqi | September 14, 2017
And so it seems train faults have become part and parcel of our lives.
While we wait for better and more reliable train systems, it seems like we may have to deal with other faults: water leaks.
“Waterfall” from the platform ceiling
On Sept. 14 morning, a netizen on Facebook posted a 5 second video of a “waterfall” coming from the platform ceiling at Pioneer MRT station.
The incident happened at around 9.45am, when there was heavy rain in the Western region of Singapore.
In the post, the netizen, Randy Tan, said:
2017.09 waterfall spotted & water leaks inside the train : |
Water leaks inside train cabins
Responding to Mothership.sg’s queries, Tan provided further evidence of the water leaks that happened inside the train carriages.
This happened on a train carriage heading towards the city.
He told Mothership.sg:
“It was heavy rain at that timing. I was going to board the train towards the city. It took me surprised to see that water flowing out & took a video and tweet to prompt/feedback SMRT. When I board the train, I saw the rainwater leak inside & I took some pics along the way.”
Tan confirmed with Mothership.sg that train services were not disrupted as a result of this.
continue reading here :
https://mothership.sg/2017/09/waterf...n-train-cabin/
So how Mr Khaw ?