Lacking basic rail engineering expertise, Singapore’s state-owned transport operator SBS Transit and the government’s Land Transport Authority surrendered after spending more than two days trying to troubleshoot a signalling fault at the new Downtown Line:
“The root cause of Thursday’s full-day glitch on the Downtown line – Singapore’s newest MRT line – remains a mystery. The fault was traced to a synchronisation issue between two sets of signalling equipment. While the immediate cause of the signalling fault has been resolved, but we don’t know what caused this glitch in the equipment.”
On Thursday (Mar 1), the 5-month-old Downtown Line saw a paralysing service disruption which had trains travelling at 18km/h, and stopping more than 15 minutes at each station.
The Singapore government then passed the ball to signalling system supplier Siemens and said that the supplier will continue investigation:
“Siemens will continue its investigations into the root cause of the failed synchronisation of the signalling equipment to prevent a recurrence.”
However, Siemens rebutted the government lie and said that they have already found the cause and submitted their findings to the government:
“We have already filed its findings to the Land Transport Authority (LTA). It is for LTA to release information relating to the incident.”
LTA did not respond or make any announcement after the rebuttal by Siemens.