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A damaged power cable sparked a series of events that led to a major disruption to the MRT affecting three train lines on Wednesday night, an incident that transportation experts said could have been prevented.
Public transportation operator SMRT Corporation, which operates the affected North-South, East-West and Circle lines, said in an update yesterday that the incident began with the insulation of a power cable breaking.
The cable was between Tuas Link and Tuas West Road stations on the East-West Line. A circuit breaker at the Tuas West Road station that should have isolated the fault did not.
This caused the electrical system of the North-South and East-West lines to be disconnected, knocking down sections of the two oldest and most used train lines at 7 pm, during the afternoon rush hour, and affecting thousands of Travellers. The affected stations were between Woodlands and Jurong East on the North-South Line, and Queenstown and Gul Circle on the East-West Line.
The power failure led to blackouts at train stations and stranded passengers on stopped trains.
SMRT then tried to get power from the Buona Vista intake substation, which also serves the Circle Line.
But this was done without first isolating the initial fault and resulted in the Circle line crashing at 7.30pm, affecting more passengers as train services stopped along a 16-station stretch, from HarbourFront. to the Serangoon stations.
SMRT said it is working with the Land Transportation Authority to conduct a full investigation into the “premature failure” of the components. The equipment manufacturers that supplied the parts are also being investigated.
WORST
Wednesday’s outage was the worst of its kind to affect the MRT network since 2017, when stretches of the North-South and East-West lines were also interrupted due to a power failure.
The concurrent failure of three train lines is also rare.
The Straits Times understands that the latest failure is not related to ongoing power replacement work on the North-South and East-West lines. It originated from a section of the East-West Line that is relatively new and is not involved in replacement works.
The outage was likely a one-time incident due to a confluence of factors that increased the scale of the outage, said assistant professor Raymond Ong of the National University of Singapore, who researches transportation infrastructure.
But he said SMRT has to review how it reacts to failures: “Protocols need to be in place to prevent one system from affecting another. This is critical. Wednesday’s incident was avoidable.”
He added that a better evacuation plan is also necessary in the event of inclement weather, as the elderly and the sick will suffer during the long wait.
Evacuation of some trains took nearly three hours Wednesday, and wet weather and lightning hazards impeded progress.
Singapore University of Social Sciences transport researcher Park Byung Joon said it was easy with the benefit of hindsight to blame SMRT for getting power from the substation without first isolating the fault, but it should be noted that it should make a decision there and then with blemishes. information.
“They were facing multiple failures and they didn’t have the whole picture,” he said. “They have to create a checklist for what to do in case of multiple failures like this to prevent it from happening again.”
Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung said the incident was a reminder for him and transport operators not to be complacent.
“(The MRT network) is a complex system, every little part matters, just like every worker, every engineer, every station manager also matters,” he said.
“(We must) continue to work hard together to make sure the system works as well as possible.”
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