Reliability of MRT network improves by 32.5% in 1Q17

Delays have been significantly reduced.

According to the Land Transport Authority (LTA), the reliability of the MRT network improved significantly in the first quarter of 2017 as shown by the Mean Kilometre Between Failure (MKBF), measuring delays of more than 5 minutes, for the overall MRT network.

The Downtown Line (DTL) and North East Line (NEL) achieved the highest MKBF across the network, at 1,033,000 train-km and 973,000 train-km respectively. The MKBF for the North-South Line (NSL) and the Circle Line (CCL) almost doubled – the NSL improved from 156,000 train-km in 2016 to 291,000 train-km in 1Q2017, while the CCL improved from 228,000 train-km in 2016 to 452,000 train-km in 1Q2017. The East-West Line (EWL) also improved by close to 50% – from 145,000 train-km in 2016 to 215,000 train-km in 1Q2017. The number of service delays exceeding thirty minutes also improved. There was only one incident in 1Q2017 across the MRT network – on the EWL – as compared to an average of four per quarter last year.

The overall MKBF for the LRT systems improved from 49,000 car-km in 2016 to 65,000 car-km for the first quarter of 2017 with both the Bukit Panjang LRT (BPLRT) and Sengkang-Punggol LRT (SPLRT) registering improvements in their MKBF. Longer service delays exceeding thirty minutes on the LRT network for the first quarter also fell to four, compared to an average of 4.5 per quarter last year.

“This improvement follows the steady progress of our major infrastructure renewal projects, as well as the operators’ investments in improving maintenance procedures and incident recovery processes. We will continue to do more to raise reliability,” LTA said.

Here’s more from LTA:

A major contributor to the MKBF improvement is the progress made in renewing our network, especially on the oldest North-South and East-West Lines (NSEWL). We completed the replacement of the sleepers in December last year, and will complete the upgrading of the signalling system for the NSL and the EWL by this year and next year respectively. We are also on track to completing the replacement of the third rail on the NSEWL, which supplies power to the trains by June 2017.

In addition to asset renewals, LTA will continue to tap on technology and work with the operators to move into predictive maintenance. We will be calling tender for the Rail Enterprise Asset Management System (REAMS), which will integrate and monitor asset information across all rail lines in a single system. The system will also allow us to perform trend analysis and fault prediction, so that faults can be detected early and addressed before disruptions occur.

The Government has made significant investments in our rail systems and will continue to do so. We expect to spend more than $4 billion renewing, upgrading and expanding existing rail assets in the next five years. This is in addition to the about $20 billion that we will be spending to build new public transport infrastructure.