Cost of Preventive Maintenance of North East Line (NEL)

Mr R Dhinakaran asked the Minister for Transport if he could provide details on resources spent on preventive maintenance of the rail track and tunnel for the North East Line in the past five years, including labour hours, replacements of critical parts, and total expenditure.

The Minister for Transport (Mr Lui Tuck Yew): Mr Speaker, Sir, from 2007–2011, I understand that the operator SBS Transit spent about $16 million on preventive maintenance for the rail tracks, the tunnels and Overhead Catenary System (OCS) of the North East Line (NEL). Please note that this amount is only for these three areas and is therefore a fraction of the total maintenance cost that is spent on the NEL. The operator also currently has an in-house team of about 470 maintenance staff dedicated to the maintenance of the line.

SBST conducts regular inspections of the tracks, tunnels and OCS, and carries out preventive maintenance in accordance with approved maintenance plans. Some of the measures that are taken include the monthly deployment of a specialised engineering vehicle known as a Multi-Function Vehicle (MFV) to help detect track faults for corrective maintenance. Six-monthly tunnel inspections are also conducted to check for cracks and leaks. Detailed inspections on the OCS are carried out every three months, as well as yearly, to ensure that it is well-maintained. Necessary measures are taken to deal with any defects that are detected during these checks.

The SBST's maintenance staff also carries out nightly checks of the tunnels and tracks, during which components exhibiting signs of defect or wear and tear are replaced immediately to ensure the safety of the system.

In spite of these checks and maintenance, train service disruptions can and do occur from time to time. Where necessary, the LTA will work with the Public Transport Operators (PTOs) to refine maintenance procedures so that the safety and reliability of the rail system is not compromised.

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Er Dr Lee Bee Wah (Nee Soon): Thank you, Mr Speaker, Sir. I would like to ask the Minister whether the amount of resources put in for preventive measures are adequate. There is a lot of unhappiness among the commuters due to the frequent train breakdowns especially over the last few months. What more can be done?

Mr Lui Tuck Yew: LTA works together with the operators. The LTA works with them on three areas. One is to define the Operating Performance Standards and to ensure that these standards are met. For example, the availability of the fleet, adherence to schedules, frequency of breakdowns, severity of breakdowns – those will come under the Operating Performing Standards. The LTA also reviews the two-yearly maintenance plans as well as audits the safety management system. These are key areas that LTA would work with both operators on.

With regard to whether the maintenance regime is adequate, given the number of lines that are available today and the increasing number of trains and trips, the LTA will constantly review this together with the operators. Certainly, the COI will commence its public hearing on Monday next week and this will be one of the areas that I am sure the COI would also look at.

With regard to disruptions, the way I would look at it is that we would try and minimise as much as possible the major disruptions and keep them in check. But I think it is unavoidable that a system that is as heavily utilised as ours is today will not face any disruptions. Every day, there are about 2.7 million passenger trips. They are running thousands of train trips for more than 18 hours a day and I dare say that there is no way you can prevent disruptions from occurring. What you try to do is that you minimise the major disruptions and if they do take place, you then have an incident management plan in place that will then try to ameliorate the effects on commuters.

Mr Cedric Foo Chee Keng (Pioneer): I thank the Minister for his response. I would like to ask him whether there are ways to detect impending failures earlier and to recover from them faster.

Mr Lui Tuck Yew: It is a very good question, Mr Speaker, and I thank Mr Cedric Foo for raising that. As systems age, it is important that we do not hold to the same maintenance regime that we have been using in the past when the systems were newer. Hence, there is a need to holistically relook what we do with regard to maintaining the older lines. I have asked LTA in particular to pay attention to looking at, for example, together with the operators, the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of particularly critical components, as well as to put in place an On-Condition Monitoring regime where you are able to detect, for example, whether there are trains that are experiencing problems because of wheel flats that are especially noisy because the wheels need to be re-profiled. On-Condition Monitoring (OCM) will give you a better idea of how to prioritise some of the maintenance efforts that you will need on particular aspects, whether of the tracks or the trains.

Mr Speaker: Er Dr Lee Bee Wah, last question, please.

Er Dr Lee Bee Wah: Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to ask the Minister – how does he define "major disruptions" and does the Minister agree that whether major disruption or minor disruption, it will cause a lot of inconvenience to the commuters. I am sure there are a lot more improvements that are needed to be done; otherwise, public transport will be unreliable.

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Mr Lui Tuck Yew: I think the way we will look at the major disruption is one that is more than 30 minutes in duration. Of course, major disruptions may impact thousands of commuters or fewer. So, for example, the NEL incident that was raised by Mr Dhinakaran impacted about 90,000 people. The service between Dhoby Ghaut and Harbourfront was shut down for about 10 hours because of a fault somewhere between Outram and Harbourfront. Yesterday, there was a disruption along the East-West line that affected about 500 people. This was slightly more than half an hour. Yes, every disruption, I know, causes inconvenience to commuters but I think it is also important to recognise that given the very heavy utilisation of the public transport system network, there will be disruptions. If you take it as a percentage of the trips that I mentioned earlier, 2.7 million passenger trips on average every day, then 500 passenger trips would be about 0.02%. So, yes, I know the 500 people were impacted, their trips were disrupted. But I think if you look at it as a whole, we have to recognise that there are going to be some disruptions, there are going to be some defects that we will encounter from time to time.