SINGAPORE – The Land Transport Authority (LTA) has begun investigations into a major six-day disruption to train services between Jurong East and Buona Vista MRT stations on the East-West Line (EWL).
The probe will cover areas such as the root cause of a component falling off a train’s undercarriage that triggered the severe disruption from Sept 25 to 30, as well as fault detection procedures and service recovery efforts.
The investigations are expected to be completed in a few months, and the findings will be made public, the authority said on Oct 2.
LTA said it will also appoint an expert advisory panel to review the findings and give technical advice.
First, the regulator will look into the root cause of why an axle box – a component on a train’s undercarriage – fell off the faulty train by doing a forensic study into the nature of the axle box failure and identifying other contributing factors that could have led to the incident.
Second, it will examine the fault detection and incident handling procedures to find out if appropriate actions were taken.
It will do so by reviewing current procedures, and it will propose measures to improve the detection of such faults, minimise disruptions to services and prevent damage to rail infrastructure.
Third, LTA will review the service recovery efforts, as well as mitigating measures during the disruption, to determine if the responses taken by rail operator SMRT were fast and comprehensive enough.
These include the speed of the roll-out of bridging bus services that ferried passengers between affected stations and the effectiveness of announcements on the disruption.
It will also look at the clarity of guidance given to commuters on other travel options such as bridging bus and shuttle train services, as well as overall crowd management.
The expert panel that is to be appointed by LTA will be chaired by Mr Malcolm Dobell, the former head of train systems at the London Underground, who has more than 45 years of experience in rail operations and maintenance.
Also on the panel are five other experts from Singapore and abroad. They include Dr Tony Lee, operations and innovation director at Hong Kong public transport operator MTR Corporation, and Mr Chen Chao, deputy general manager of the vehicle branch at the Shanghai Shentong Metro Group.
The other members are Mr Chew Tai Chong, director and global rail leader at consultancy Arup in Britain; Associate Professor Gan Hiong Yap, a maintenance engineering expert from the Singapore Institute of Technology; and Professor Manoj Gupta, a material science expert at the National University of Singapore with a mechanical engineering background.
“As part of the investigations, LTA will gather the facts, interview staff involved, review records and evidence, and consult with the expert advisory panel,” the authority added.
LTA starts probe into EWL train disruption, will appoint expert panel to review findings
