At rush hour this morning (Jul 25), commuters experienced nothing out of the ordinary — just another day, just another delay. This time, the slow-moving trains and crowded platforms were the result of an intermittent power fault and track circuit fault on both North-South and East-West Lines. Oh joy.
SMRT’s first tweet of the day at 7:26am warned commuters of the pile-up to be expected.
Trains running at longer intervals due to intermittent power fault on NSEWL. Crowds expected at stations.
— SMRT Corporation (@SMRT_Singapore) July 24, 2017
Subsequent updates on the North-South and East-West Lines continued to alert commuters to trains “running at longer intervals”.
[NSEWL] UPDATE: Trains are running at longer intervals. Our engineers are carrying out checks.
— SMRT Corporation (@SMRT_Singapore) July 25, 2017
[NSEWL] UPDATE: Trains are running at longer intervals. Our staff are working to rectify the fault.
— SMRT Corporation (@SMRT_Singapore) July 25, 2017
[EWL] UPDATE: Due to an earlier track circuit fault at #Commonwealth, pls add 25 mins train travel time from #JooKoon to #TiongBahru.
— SMRT Corporation (@SMRT_Singapore) July 25, 2017
But it seems like commuters were already grumbling about delays at least an hour before SMRT’s tweet, saying no announcements were made even though crowds were swarming the stations.
Train track power fault. Jam and delayed in lakeside. @SMRT_Singapore
— Moses (@greenteacup) July 24, 2017
#lakeside #smrtscrewedupagain @SMRT_Singapore @ChannelNewsAsia @TODAYonline pic.twitter.com/zJ34H5DFlJ
— settpaing @ steve (@settpaing) July 24, 2017
lakeside mrt queue until bus stop 🙆🏻♂️ @SMRT_Singapore pic.twitter.com/qlxoB4K675
— iris west allen (@syahidahmohamed) July 24, 2017
Basically, SMRT was just having another one of its Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days.
The latest update at 10:19AM claimed that train services on the North-South Line were back to normal.
[NSEWL] UPDATE: Trains are running normally on the NSL. Our staff are working to rectify the fault on the EWL.
— SMRT Corporation (@SMRT_Singapore) July 25, 2017
