Commuters on the East-West Line (EWL) certainly didn’t have a pleasant morning today when trains were delayed — a conundrum exacerbated by the lack of alerts posted on SMRT’s official social media accounts.
Massive train delay on EW line and no one is reporting about it. 15 min and counting. cc @SMRT_Singapore pic.twitter.com/e9blAbtXrI
— Liane Ng (@angmohlian) October 24, 2017
Now thanks to Yahoo News Singapore, the beleaguered public transport operator clarified why passengers faced massive problems along the green line today. According to SMRT, the EWL encountered a “software fault” on its signalling system around 8:30am; a fault that was fixed within 10 minutes.
The reason for the delays and human congestion was attributed to the need for trains to run slower for safety reasons, said SMRT’s corporate communication VP Patrick Nathan.
The spokesman added that station and train announcements were indeed made to commuters who were caught in the human gridlock in the morning. The spokesman, however, did not respond to Yahoo’s queries about why updates weren’t provided on SMRT’s social media accounts — another major reason why commuters were so miffed in the first place.
SMRT also oddly kept mum on social media about disrupted services on September 19, when a train fault on the EWL resulted in massive crowds on station platforms. And it happened on a Tuesday morning as well, so just maybe there’s some kind of connection there… oh who are we kidding — we’re just grasping at straws here.
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