Rail Line Length of delay

Chart data excludes suicide attempts, maintenance/upgrading works and events that are beyond the control of the service operators e.g. power trip caused by lightning.

Under the licensing agreement between the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the service operators, SMRT and SBS Transit are required to adhere to the Operating Performance Standards (OPS), which tracks the frequency of delays exceeding 30 minutes, among other key indicators. SMRT also classifies delays exceeding 1 hour as the most severe level of disruption (RED 1 and RED 2), which will trigger the Rail Incident Management Plan (RIMP). When the RIMP is activated, SMRT will deploy bus bridging services and additional staff to affected stations. In the case of a RED incident, the Police and the Singapore Civil Defense Force will also be activated (Committee of Inquiry report, para. 75, 348).

Observations:

• In the following months after the unprecedented disruptions of December 2011, SMRT has been struggling to improve service reliability. The East West Line proved to be the greatest challenge, where there has been at least one delay exceeding 1 hour every month in the first half of 2012. In particular, there were 3 delays exceeding one hour, in January and February each.
• The North South Line's worst month was April 2012, where it was hit by 4 delays exceeding 1 hour.
• Both the East West Line and North South Line are trending towards an increase in delays less than 30 minutes. The LTA-SMRT Joint Team also observed an upward trend of delays lasting less than 10 minutes.