Alternative Transport Plans in Event of MRT Breakdowns

Mr Lim Biow Chuan asked the Minister for Transport whether LTA has reviewed and approved the contingency plans by SMRT to provide alternative transport whenever there is a breakdown in the train services.

The Senior Minister of State for Transport (Mrs Josephine Teo) (for the Minister for Transport): Mdm Speaker, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) requires the rail operators to have Rail Incident Management Plans (RIMPs) which set out their responses to train incidents and the measures they will take to mitigate the inconvenience caused to commuters. These measures include regular provision of information to affected commuters, free boarding of public buses and bus bridging services at affected stations. These plans are approved by LTA, and are regularly reviewed and enhanced.

For a disruption on the scale of the 7 July 2015 incident, which involved the entire North-South and East-West Lines during the evening peak, the operators' Rail Incident Management Plans were not adequate and 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.

Therefore, following the incident, LTA has reviewed the measures and worked with both bus operators to focus on emergency ramp up of capacity on bus connections. In the event of a similar rail incident, we will boost the capacity for regular trunk services calling at affected MRT stations connecting the city and the heartlands. Depending on the scale of the rail disruption, a number of buses will be diverted from other bus services with lower demand to enhance these identified services. The operating hours of Government-contracted City Direct Services can also be extended.

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Now let me turn to bus bridging which brings commuters at affected stations to the unaffected stations so they can continue their journey. For a large-scale disruption where bus bridging cannot be effectively implemented at all stations, a special 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 the 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.

By doing so, commuters affected by a large-scale disruption will have two options to travel between the city and the heartlands through: firstly, trunk services running at increased frequencies and expanded capacity; or secondly, a combination of alternative MRT lines and special bridging services.

LTA and the operators have worked out the arrangements and the improved contingency plan was put in place recently, about a month after the incident.

Mr Lim Biow Chuan (Mountbatten): Mdm Speaker, may I ask the Senior Minister of State this: on the event in question on 7 July, the feedback given was that the stations were quite chaotic. Many of the commuters did not know what was happening and they did not know where to go or what bridging buses were provided. If indeed LTA has worked with the transport operators about how to manage a rail disruption again, then why was the situation not better managed? Having said that, would there be better management, better practices of similar kind of breakdowns? Would there also be contingency plans to better manage announcements as well as crowd control at the stations. At the end of the day, many commuters accept that trains, like all mechanical things, do break down. But they want to know, "What do I do next as a commuter? Do I get stuck in the station?" Or for commuters who are going to the MRT stations, they have to know, "Do I even go there?" How do we prevent people from going to the train stations when the system has broken down?

Mrs Josephine Teo: Mdm Speaker, indeed, the operators together with LTA do have Rail Incident Management Plans. But I think it is fair to say that for the incident that occurred on 7 July, the scale of it was not something that they planned adequately for. That is why the management of the incident fell short by commuters' standards. What we want to do is to improve on those contingency plans, whether it is in relation to the bus connections or other travel connections that the commuters really want. In terms of the information, it is an area still being looked into as well. Those areas are still being looked into as well. Whilst we are continuously looking into those areas, the contingency plans relating to the bus connections have been firmed up and they have been put in place.

Mr Cedric Foo Chee Keng (Pioneer): A contingency plan is one way to make sure that we minimise inconveniences to commuters but the breakdown of the scale of 7 July is really so large that probably investment is better made preventing such a massive breakdown through redundancy or isolating breakdowns to certain segments of the track, rather than to invest in an entire large-scale contingency plan. Not only have they got to find the buses, they have to find the drivers and so on. Can the Senior Minister of State comment on that.

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Mrs Josephine Teo: Mdm Speaker, I thank the Member Mr Cedric Foo for raising that point. Indeed, quite apart from focusing on corrective maintenance, preventive maintenance is equally important, if not more so, particularly as the system is no longer the new system that we had years ago. That is an area of work that will continue to occupy the LTA as well as the operators' attention for quite some time to come.

At the same time, if and when an incident were to happen, it is reasonable for commuters to expect that the management of it ought to be up to mark. That is also an area that we want to make sure that we improve. So, both of these have to proceed in parallel.

Mr Lim Biow Chuan: Mdm Speaker, I just wanted to put this to the Senior Minister of State again, I asked whether practice runs are conducted, just like army training. You practise and practise and practise to make sure that if indeed it happens again, the repercussions are better dealt with. Do you have contingency plans, do you practise the situation where the system breaks down again and there are thousands of commuters in the stations and what do you do with them?

Mrs Josephine Teo: It is not just in land transport that there are exercises being conducted on a regular basis. In air transport and in sea transport, we do it too. I think we are not the only agencies who do that. In other Ministries, there are also tests of contingency planning. But there is nothing quite like the real thing, where the commuters' reactions are not entirely predictable and their patterns of travel are also not entirely as you expected before. This tested the strength of our plans, and we identified areas that we ourselves think ought to be improved further. So, that is something that we will put our attention on doing.

As I had mentioned earlier in my reply, the incident happened about a month ago. We wasted no time in making sure that we looked into how onward travel connections can be made by affected commuters. We thought that one area of opportunity and one area that we can do much better in when it comes to large-scale disruptions is in making sure that the capacity and the frequency of the trunk services which can provide alternative connections for the commuters are quickly ramped up.

How do you mobilise the resources to do that? We have worked it out with the operators, and that plan is in effect.

Mdm Speaker: Mr Zaqy Mohamad, last question.

Mr Zaqy Mohamad (Chua Chu Kang): I thank the Senior Minister of State for the clarifications earlier on. My question is quite related to the Parliamentary Question I have, No 36, on the Government Contracting Model (GCM). I just want to ask, when you have more operators in future, how does this work out if you have a mass disruption like that? Are we prepared to coordinate, not just beyond the current SMRT and TransitLink Services, but to more operators contracted to do this service? Thank you.

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Mrs Josephine Teo: There are provisions for the resources available to these Government contracted operators, and they can also be brought to bear in an incident of this nature.

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