This Morning (26 May 2019), 3 Power Faults Led to 3 Train Disruptions; SMRT Investigating

MRT disruptions are no longer news.

Firstly, they’re as common as a cat meowing in public. If media outlets were to report both cats meowing in public and MRT disruptions, we’d not have enough server space to host these articles.

Secondly, train services are improving. Despite what you’ve seen, statistics have shown improvements in our MRT network: in the whole of 2018, trains travelled 690,000 before a disruption. However, in just the first three months of 2019, trains have travelled 786,000 before a disruption.

Numbers don’t lie.

Since it’s no longer newsworthy, why are we writing about this?

Is it because we’ve got nothing to write? We eat full nothing to do? We’re trying our best to shame SMRT?

No. It’s because this time, the disruptions are a falling row of dominoes, and this time, we’re seeing commuters praising SMRT on how they handle the situation.

3 X Power Failures When You Were Probably Sleeping

This morning, at 4:45 a.m., a power fault occurred at Raffles Place MRT Station. Therefore, when train services began, there was a longer interval between Newton MRT Station and Marina South Pier MRT Station, whereby commuters were advised to add 30 minutes to their usual commute time.

By 7:45 a.m, the fault was rectified.

But apparently, ten minutes earlier at 7:35 a.m., another power fault had occurred on the CCL between Marina Bay and Bayfront, which is unrelated to the previous power fault. The train service only resumed after 15 minutes at 7:50 a.m.

It didn’t end there.

About forty minutes later, at 8:26 a.m., SMRT tweeted that the first power fault has recurred, and so there was no train service between Orchard and Marina South Pier. It only resumed service at 8:50 a.m.

During the disruptions, free bus services were deployed. As it’s a Sunday morning, the number of complaints online were few and far between.

In fact, if you go online, you’d see commuters apparently praising SMRT for the way they handle the situation: not just by providing updates online but also a reminder that they’ve already improved a lot.

So far, it’s unknown what caused the power faults, and SMRT is investigating the cause.

Exercise Greyhound on 22 May 2019

You’ve got to give credit where credit’s due, and this could be it: Just a few days back, SMRT, together with LTA, carried out an exercise whereby they simulated a scenario in which three separate rail incidents occurred within a short timeframe during the evening peak on the North-South, Circle and North-East Lines, and how the staff, together with various agencies, handled the situation.

You know, it’s like how we NSmen carry out exercises to prepare us for war.

While we didn’t get to go to war (and hope will never need to), SMRT unfortunately has to go through a disruption four days after the exercise.

Like what our Enciks always said, “Train hard, fight easy.”

I think that’s why they’ve earned praises today; because they’re trained for it.

Hopefully they won’t need to go to war so often.