Yesterday’s 7-Hour MRT Disruption Wasn’t Due to ‘Signal Fault’ But Due to a ‘Switch’

By
George Yang
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Now, let’s face it: when it comes to train disruption, we could only come to two conclusions.

Firstly, private-hire drivers are going to “huat” while commoners like us who have to get to work on time are going to “cry”.

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Secondly, it’s going to be another “signal fault”, because that seems to be as common as rain nowadays.

But well, it seems we’ve a new “fault” to look at now.

It’s the switch mechanism.

Image: wearefine.com

Disruption on Peak Hours

If you’ve taken the EW line to work yesterday morning, you’d have known about a disruption that lasted for a whopping seven hours.

But what’s worse is that it started as early as 7:00 a.m., and the fault occurred at Clementi MRT Station.

According to The Straits Times, the trains were allegedly unable to change tracks, and therefore the change had to be done manually (not sure how, though I’m sure it’s not VR Man stepping onto the track and pushing trains aside like Superman).

The fault affected the stations from Boon Lay to Queenstown, and free regular and bridging buses were available between these two stations. But given that it’s peak hours, that won’t have sufficed.

SMRT then advised commuters to take the North-South Line to the city instead: which essentially means that if you’re in Boon Lay and are going to CBD, you should go all the way north to Woodlands, Ang Mo Kio then back to City Hall.

I don’t know about you, but that suggestion would have freaked me out. It’s like telling me that rice isn’t available in a chicken rice stall temporarily, and I should have noodles instead.

No doubt stations were packed: Reports suggested a delay of 40 minutes or so, and it was only at about 1:30 p.m. that SMRT mentioned on Twitter that the fault has been fixed.

We’re pretty used to signal faults, track faults and even door fault.

Now, we’re introduced to a new fault: switch fault.

Okay, maybe it’s not called a “switch fault”, but it’s still something new; something we’ve not come across before.

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Switch Mechanism Led to Disruption

According to Senior Minister of State for Transport Janil Puthucheary, the problem was due to the switch mechanism. Remember what you read earlier about trains being unable to change track and had to be changed manually? Yeah, that could be the one.

He added, “We could have taken a decision to stop services and allow (authorities) to concentrate just on repairing the problem, but that would have been a very big impact on the commuter experience. So the decision we took now allows trains to pass (but it’s) slowing down the commute.”

SMRT then posted this in their Facebook Page:

If you can’t read it, here’s what they wrote:

Update on East-West Line track fault on 19 September 2018

At about 7.00am this morning (19 Sep’18) a track point fault occurred on the East-West Line (EWL) between Jurong East and Clementi MRT stations.

After the fault was detected, train services between both stations were stopped for about 30 minutes to allow our staff to go onto the track to check a faulty point machine, which is used to control train movements at rail junctions when trains move from one track to another. Our staff inspected the point machine and assessed that train operations could continue but at a slower speed.

As a precaution, when train services resumed 30 mins later at about 7.40am, the trains travelled at a reduced speed when passing the track point.

The plan was to keep train services moving during the morning peak with the aim of fixing the fault after the peak period. This would allow EWL commuters to travel from Jurong East towards the city, and commuters to travel from the city to the interchange station at Jurong East.

We apologise to commuters who were inconvenienced with longer journeys. We have deployed more staff to assist service ambassadors to manage the peak hour crowds at EWL stations. While the fault was being rectified, commuters were advised to add 40 minutes to their EWL journey. To ease congestion, we sent four trains to pick up commuters travelling towards the city from Jurong East and another two trains to Clementi to serve commuters travelling towards the city.

Free regular and bridging bus services were available to commuters between Queenstown and Boon Lay MRT stations.

After the morning peak, engineering staff went down to the track in between service and fixed the point machine at 1.20pm. This arrangement required EWL trains at Jurong East and Clementi to halt temporarily for up to five minutes every time the engineering staff went on track to carry out repair work. The team accessed the track six times. After the fault was rectified, train services returned progressively to normal speed.

We apologise to everyone affected by this morning’s disruptions.

SMRT and LTA are still trying to figure out what caused the problem with the switch mechanism.

Would we be seeing more of this? I certainly hope not.

Short Disruption on Tuesday Morning as Well

Last you’re not aware, there’s a short disruption on Tuesday morning as well, and normal train services resumed after about an hour. The reason? Door fault. At least it’s something we’re familiar with.

I wonder how many more new faults are on the way to headlines #justsaying

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George Yang
Email: [email protected]