Senior Minister of State for Transport Josephine Teo says that following the major breakdown on Jul 7 which affected more than 250,000 commuters, LTA has reviewed the measures and worked with both bus operators to focus on an emergency ramp-up of capacity on bus connections
SINGAPORE: Bus service capacity will be boosted in the event of a train disruption, such as the major breakdown in July which affected more than 250,000 commuters.
Senior Minister of State for Transport Josephine Teo told the House on Monday (Aug 17) that following the incident, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) has reviewed the measures and worked with both bus operators to focus on an emergency ramp-up of capacity on bus connections.
On Jul 7, train services on the North-South and East-West lines were crippled for about three hours. Investigations later revealed that a contaminated insulator on the third rail which supplies power to the network resulted in intermittent power trips at multiple locations, leading to the disruption.
Rail incident management plans were not adequate for a disruption of that scale, noted Mrs Teo.
"It is understandable why many affected commuters were unhappy with the management of the incident. The capacity of alternative travel connections between the heartlands and the city needed considerable strengthening, and would have required significantly more resources beyond SMRT’s to mitigate the impact,” Mrs Teo said.
Should similar rail incidents occur in future, authorities will boost the capacity of regular trunk bus services calling at affected MRT stations. Depending on the scale of the disruption, a number of buses can be diverted from other routes with lower demand to ease the situation, while the operating hours of Government-contracted City Direct Services can also be extended.
These buses shuttle commuters between their neighbourhoods and the city.
Mrs Teo also revealed that in the case of a large-scale disruption, a special bus bridging plan will be implemented to serve commuters living in major towns in the northern, western and eastern parts of Singapore.
"This will allow commuters in the city to travel via alternative MRT lines to key interchange stations such as Bishan, Paya Lebar and Buona Vista, and subsequently use special bridging buses for onward travel to towns such as Ang Mo Kio, Woodlands, Tampines and Choa Chu Kang. This special bridging plan works similarly in the reverse direction,” said Mrs Teo.
She added that the LTA and transport operators have worked out the arrangements and the improved contingency plan was recently put in place.
www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/more-bus-services-to-be/2056262.html