“MRT reliability has dropped over the 12-month period ending in September this year, with the East-West Line (EWL) showing the biggest decline,” said the Land Transport Authority (LTA) in its latest Performance of Rail Service Reliability report released on 22 Nov.
The statistics are based on a 12-month moving average of mean kilometres between failures (MKBF), an engineering measure of rail reliability. According to the report, MRT trains ran 1.798 million train-km without disruptions of more than five minutes between October 2023 and September 2024. This figure is lower than the previous years, with a decrease from 2.077 million train-km recorded in 2023, 2.089 million train-km in 2022, and 1.994 million train-km in 2021.
Among the individual lines, the Downtown Line (DTL) was the best performer with 8.112 million train-km traveled between delays, while the Circle Line (CCL) performed the worst with just 1.04 million train-km between delays, a slight dip from 2023. However, the reliability of most lines remained steady except for the EWL, which dropped to 2.027 million train-km between delays from 3.363 million train-km last year.
“The Thomson-East Coast Line was not included in the report as the line will open fully only in 2026,” the report stated.
Unfortunately, the LRT network also suffered a decrease in reliability. The overall MKBF of the LRT network dropped to 358,000 car-km between delays, down from 546,000 car-km in 2023. The Sengkang-Punggol LRT experienced a sharp decline to 612,000 car-km from 1.217 million car-km in 2023 while the Bukit Panjang LRT fell to 189,000 car-km between delays.
“The number of service delays may also be on an upward trend on the MRT network with six service delays of more than 30 minutes across the entire MRT network in the first nine months of this year, compared with five for the whole of 2023, seven in 2022, and just three in 2021,” the report highlighted.
Two service delays this year occurred on the EWL, while three were on the CCL, and one was on the DTL. On the LRT network, the number of service delays has been relatively stable.
