MRT commuters’ unhappiness needs to be addressed: Lui

SINGAPORE — The setbacks in the first two months of this year are a stark reminder that improving the reliability of Singapore’s rail system is a lengthy and painstaking journey, even while the overall trend on train withdrawals shows that we are moving in the right direction, said Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew in Parliament today (March 11).

Mr Lui said he was keenly aware of the issues to be fixed and his priority will be to address the dissatisfaction with waiting and travel time, and reliability of rail services.

The 2013 Public Transport Customer Satisfaction Survey (PTCSS) conducted by SIM University showed that customer satisfaction of MRT services dipped from 92.1 per cent in 2012 to 88.9 per cent, due mainly to lower customer satisfaction with waiting time, reliability, travel time and customer service.

Mr Lui also said that there should be a focus on reducing train disruptions during the morning peak hours because these cause the greatest inconvenience to the most commuters.

As the most important checks are done in the wee hours prior to deploying the fleet in the morning, Mr Lui said that the operators must enhance their night time maintenance works, and conduct more stringent checks on the condition of the trains, just before they are launched into revenue service.

Other than train reliability, Mr Lui also announced the acceleration of the noise barrier programme and the expansion of train capacity.

Separately, the Land Transport Authority have also announced plans to develop a central data repository for asset failure reports and maintenance records, to ensure accurate and timely knowledge about the conditions of all rail assets.

Apart from its regulatory audits, LTA will also review asset health and performances with the public transport operators on a regular basis, to engender a shift in maintenance culture where possible areas of concern are surfaced early based on monitored trends, and where measures are put in place to arrest such trends before faults develop.