SMRT Admits Inability to Cope

SMRT managing director of trains Lee Ling Wee said that is was a tough call to stop train service last week due to the breakdown that caused the two main MRT lines to grind to a halt.

Mr Lee was on Channel 5's Talking Point with the Land Transport Authority's (LTA) chief executive Chew Men Leong and Professor Lee Der Horng, from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the National University of Singapore.

He said that he would do whatever he could to keep the trains running, but there was the real risk that the trains would be stuck between stations causing another passenger evacuation onto the tracks.

“That was a very dreadful moment,” he said. “It was peak hour and 250,000 commuters will be inconvenienced, among which we have Muslim Singaporeans who are going back to break fast. But what is the alternative? The alternative is to continue, which means it may get more trains stuck between stations.

“One train has about 1,500 passengers and if you have 10 trains stuck between stations, it means we have a situation whereby we have to evacuate 15,000 people walking on the track - you think about it, children, students, pregnant ladies, the elderly - that is a situation I didn't want to have, so I guess it was the lesser of two evils."

SMRT was not able to handle last week's massive train disruption on its own, despite deploying 700 staff that night, admitted Mr Lee. He suggested setting up a taskforce involving the Land Transport Authority and other enforcement agencies.

"One trainload is about 1,400, so we're talking about three to four trainloads of people descending onto the concourse and we were just not able to cope. This is a situation whereby I think SMRT just doesn't have the organic capacity to cope with this level of disruption. I think perhaps it's something that we need to take at the national level," he said.
LTA chief said that all the assets that were available that night where mobilised, including buses from SBS Transit. There were also plans to use private bus companies’ services had the need arose.

LTA is also assessing what needs to be done better, and what other contingency measures can be put in place.

Mr Lee also pointed out that the North-South and East-West Lines, Singapore’s first MRT lines, were nearing the end of their lifespan, which would see a rise in the number of faults that occur. SMRT also claim that aging insulators in the train's third rail system may have caused a power leak that led to all the problems last Tuesday.

"The third rail is actually suspended in the air by a series of brackets,” he said. “The brackets are insulated from the third rail by this ceramic material that is called insulator. The third rail system has been in place since 1987, so it is almost 30 years old, and some of these insulators are aging, and so there's a possibility that some of them have lost their insulation properties."
Mr Chew said maintenance has to be kept up. "The system has been running for over 30 years; in 25 years of those 30 years actually the system has run pretty well based on the design we have actually put in," he said. "I think it's very important that as the system continues to age, the maintenance needs to be kept up specifically.

“Additional effort needs to actually be put in to see how we can pre-emptively see what the vulnerabilities are and change out specific components."

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