So, two separate pieces of news regarding public transport here — one good, the other, a little… irksome.
First, SBS Transit and the Land Transport Authority (LTA) announced that there’ll be free travel for all across the whole Downtown Line on Oct 21 and 22. It’s part of the opening celebrations for the third phase of Downtown Line, which adds 16 new train stations from the Fort Canning station to the Expo station. Though commuters will still need to tap in and out to enter the platforms, no fares will be deducted.
If you’re a train otaku like the dude below, you’ll be glad to know that there’ll be an open house on Oct 15 to give the public a free preview of the Downtown Line’s new stations.
Now on to the bad stuff. SMRT, for some reason, decided to stay mum on social media yesterday morning despite the very conspicuous train fault that struck the East-West Line. Tampines, Bedok, Pasir Ris and Simei stations were packed with massive crowds of people — many of whom could have used a heads up by SMRT before making plans to commute by train.
It’s been more than a day since then, and still SMRT has refused to acknowledge what happened with any statements or posts regarding the train fault that affected so many during yesterday morning’s rush hour.
Welp, today the situation remains the same. The chatter on Twitter this morning noted that train services on the North-South Line were affected by delays.
7 minute intervals south bound from Sembawang this morning. You’re becoming a national embarrassment pic.twitter.com/ystFJFTVHt
— Chris Howells (@howellschris) September 19, 2017
early morning train fault north south line
— juzme (@cristal050187) September 19, 2017
#smrt train fault announcement made from bukit batok towards jurong east. It says additional 5 min delay. Stuck on track now
— Heng Choon Kee (@choon_kee) September 19, 2017
Despite it all, no announcements were made on SMRT’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. Perhaps it’s sick of fielding abuse in 140 words or less every time it makes alerts about train service disruptions.
