SINGAPORE — Stretches of the North-South and East-West lines
(NSEWL) could be partially closed until as late as noon on Sundays
in order to accelerate sleeper replacement works that are currently
underway.
The replacement works were scheduled for completion by 2019 but are
now expected to be finished by 2016, a Land Transport Authority
(LTA) and SMRT joint task said at a media briefing today (May
14).
The team was tasked with looking into reducing disruptions and
increasing reliability of the NSEWL.
SMRT also revealed that they are looking into purchasing machinery
which would allow them to replace more sleepers during non-revenue
hours, between 1.30am and 4.30am.
Currently, SMRT staff manually replace the sleepers and about 90
sleepers can be replaced during this period.
Thus far, 11,000 of the 188,000 sleepers, about 6 per cent, have
been replaced.
The joint team also said that measures to improve rail service
reliability and resilience on the NSEWL have started to show some
results.
The number of train withdrawals decreased to a monthly average of
37 withdrawals in the first four months of 2013, compared to about
59 withdrawals in the first four months of 2012.
On the whole, the number of incidents causing disruptions of more
than 10 minutes has also declined from 0.20 to 0.16 for every
100,000km of train run.
However, incidents causing a delay of more than 30 minutes continue
to be an area of concern that the joint team will continue to work
on, said Mr Chew Hock Yong, Chief Executive, Land Transport
Authority.
There have been two such incidents in the first quarter of this
year with only three being recorded for the whole of 2012.
TODAY