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SINGAPORE – Rail operator SMRT made the right calls when handling the evacuation of stranded passengers on stopped trains during the massive MRT disruption on October 14, Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung said.
He told the House on Tuesday (Nov. 3) that rail guidelines call for a decision to be made within 30 minutes on whether to evacuate passengers from trains and walk the tracks to the nearest station, a process called detraining.
SMRT only decided to evacuate passengers 40 minutes after the breakdown began that night, as it initially had “some hope” that it could get power from another substation to reactivate the grid, it said.
However, an attempt to restore power to the interrupted sections of the North-South and East-West lines failed. It also closed train services along part of the Circle Line.
Approximately 6,800 commuters were caught on stopped trains across three MRT lines on October 14, of which 78 commuters were stranded on a train for nearly three hours due to bad weather. The long time required to evacuate them had drawn criticism from the public.
Ong said the derailment is being carried out only as a “last resort,” due to the risks involved, for example, tripping over the tracks or walking alongside the third rail, which has high electrical currents running through it when trains are running. .
“You have to make sure you disable (the third rail), because it is no joke to walk next to 750 volts … and that night, there was bad weather and then there is a risk of lightning.”
SMRT stopped the derailment once there was a risk of lightning, said in response to Mr. Saktiandi Supaat (Bishan-Toa Payoh). “Never endanger the lives of passengers.
“I think the decisions they made that night in terms of detouring were correct,” he added.
The minister recapitulated the findings of the Land Transportation Authority on how the simultaneous failures of a power cable and a trip coil in a circuit breaker along the Western Tuas Extension had caused the October 14 breakdown, which affected 123,000 travelers.
On whether SMRT would be penalized for the breakdown, Ong said in response to Saktiandi that systems provider Alstom has already committed to replacing faulty equipment that contributed to the breakdown.
Noting that SMRT and the Land Transportation Authority (LTA) have also reflected on what they could have done better, he said, adding that it was more important to work together to improve the rail network rather than point the finger.
“The mood can easily change when it becomes one of grief and punishment,” he said. “And then the mood changes when everyone … to put it crudely, covers their butt and after a while you don’t get the best result.”
But there is a disciplinary structure, and authorities will penalize operators if necessary, he added.
Ong said that Alstom will replace all the electric power cables that run 150 km along the Western Tuas Extension by the end of next year.
It will also replace the 113 trip coils, core components of circuit breakers, along the three-year western stretch of the East-West Line by the end of this year.
The company will do it on its own, which did not disclose.
Mr. Ong said: “Nobody wants an incident like this to happen, but when it happened, we must not allow it to break our spirits.”
“So as a team, we take collective responsibility, not finger pointing, and we will do our best and close the gaps.”
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