Maintenance Regime and Resources for MRT Lines

Mr Yee Jenn Jong asked the Minister for Transport with regard to all MRT and LRT lines, for each year from 2001 to 2011 what is (i) the weekly average number of passengers per car-kilometre; (ii) the average number of kilometres travelled by each train per week; (iii) the amount spent by each operator on maintenance per car-kilometre in 2005 prices; and (iv) the number of man-hours spent by each operator on maintenance per car-kilometre (km).

Mr Lui Tuck Yew: As Mr Yee has not defined the terms, some of which are not the usual metrics used for transport monitoring, we have provided data using the following definitions: (i) weekly average number of passenger per car-km to be the annual ridership on the MRT/LRT line divided by the annual car-km for the line; (ii) average number of kilometres travelled by each train per week to be the average weekly train-km divided by the total number of trains in the operators' train fleet. This is with the exception of the Bukit Panjang LRT (BPLRT) for which computations have been done on a car-basis, instead of train-basis, as the system runs a mixture of one and two-car operations. For (iii) and (iv), the maintenance data available to us is only for amount spent and not manpower levels. As these are not disaggregated for individual lines, we can only provide information on maintenance spending at the operator level. Finally, with regard to the data provided, the financial year for SMRT runs from April to March of the following year while the financial year for SBS Transit runs from January to December of the same year.

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Table 1 below shows the average ridership per car-km 6 while Table 2 shows the train-km per train per week for the various MRT/LRT lines. As the North East Line (NEL) only opened in June 2003, the data therefore only reflects a half-year of revenue service for 2003. The Circle Line (CCL) has also opened in stages since May 2009. In addition, although the Sengkang-Punggol LRT's (SPLRT) Sengkang East loop opened in 2003, other SPLRT loops only opened later.

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Table 3 provides maintenance expenditure data as provided by the operators to the Public Transport Council (PTC).