Downtown Line hit by 7-hour disruption, longest delay on network to date

SINGAPORE — City-bound trains on the Downtown Line (DTL) hit a snarl for around seven hours on Wednesday (May 3), the longest delay to affect the four-year-old rail network to date. 

Stops at each station lasted longer and trains bypassed Botanic Gardens MRT Station due to a signalling-related fault that caused platform doors to stop opening automatically.

This is the second time in seven months that the line was disrupted for hours due to a problem with the platform doors. Last October, a bolt came loose and caused a platform door to become dislodged at Sixth Avenue station.

The latest incident at Botanic Gardens station occurred at 5.45am when the doors, which are controlled by the signalling system, malfunctioned and could not open automatically, SBS Transit said in a press statement on Wednesday. “Staff members had to manually operate the doors whenever a train arrived at the station, and this took some time, which caused a delay to train services,” it added. 

On its social media account, the operator first tweeted at 7.41am that commuters could expect extra travelling time of up to 10 minutes between Bukit Panjang and Chinatown stations. About two hours later, it tweeted that train services heading towards Chinatown will skip the Botanic Gardens station. In its statement, SBS Transit said the decision was taken to “enable our engineers to resolve the problem as soon as possible and minimise inconvenience to commuters”. 

“With the closure of the platform, train services on the DTL could continue without delay on the line,” it added. Commuters were advised to transfer at Tan Kah Kee and Stevens stations to continue with their trips.

Commuters at the station said that they saw workers crowding around a faulty door, which was barricaded.

The fault was fixed at around 1pm and the platform re-opened for service, with the exception of two doors which had to remain close for more in-depth repairs “during engineering hours” last night, SBS Transit said. It apologised to all affected commuters for the inconvenience this caused. 

During normal operations, when a train enters a station, the signalling system will communicate with the train system so that both the platform screen doors and train doors can automatically open at the same time. 

Commenting on the incident, transport researcher Lee Der-Horng from the National University of Singapore said that synchronising the train doors and platform doors to open and close automatically should not be “too much of an issue” to rectify. The issue could lie with a loss of communication between the train and the platform doors, resulting in the malfunction, he said. 

However, he felt that the repairs could have been left to after-service hours and higher priority should have been given to train operations without disrupting commuter travel. “If they were able to open the doors manually, they could still have allowed the trains to stop at Botanic Gardens,” Professor Lee added, noting that the impact of the partial closure on commuters was “quite significant” since it was an interchange stop. 

TODAY understands that DTL’s signalling system — a communications-based train control system — is the same as the one being trialled on the North South Line (NSL), which is run by SMRT. Plans are also on the cards to roll out the system on SMRT’s East West Line. DTL’s system is provided by Siemens while the upgrading work on SMRT’s signalling system is done by Thales. 

During trials conducted in March on weekday nights for the NSL’s new signalling system, there were times when the doors failed to open and close automatically, owing to a software bug. SMRT later said there were also instances during the ongoing all-day Sunday trials when platform screen doors failed to shut. ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY KENNETH CHENG