SMRT

pianist Wrote:i am not sure if buses can compete well with trains.

Trains have very high fixed costs but low operating costs. Buses are the reverse. That is why when SBS got the NEL it changed the bus routes - to drive traffic to the NEL stations and to avoid competing with NEL. When ridership is low the trains lose money. Buses just run less frequently and still make money. When ridership is high the trains make money, while buses have to run more frequently and pay for more fuel, so they don't make that much more money.

In Hong Kong, the MTR, buses, minibuses, taxis and trams all seem to coexist peacefully and profitably. I don't recall any MTR breakdowns in recent memory.

SMRT breakdown is more or less a maintenance problem. NS line has been running for umpteen years and I would say that the design itself should be robust. For a robust design to fail, the reason can be either the line is not maintained properly or there is some design change in the rail track or passenger train design change.

MRT has been introducing new trains to the system due to higher passenger volume. If there is a new design of collector shoe that is introduced to the new mrt design, it may have caused some unintended damages to the power rail.

Or rather, there may be a change in the inspection procedure such that the wear and tear is being ignored.

Was reading the ST today about the SMRT breakdown. Something puzzled me here (and I am not an engineer) - the claws holding the third rail were found to have been dislodged in various places and just lying around, with sections of the thid rail sagging! How could maintenance checks on the rail NOT have picked it up? Imagine broken pieces of china/glass littering the floor - would that not have been obvious?

Methinks the maintenance only focused on certain sections and not others. It was also mentioned that the shock absorbers were last checked TEN years ago.....gosh!

I am also not technically inclined. I saw the tv news, LTA worked hand in hand with SMRT to maintain the railway track. So whose responsibility ? LTA or SMRT ? Very confusing ?

market pricing in smrt needs to spend huge amount on repair/maintenance?

(19-12-2011, 08:57 AM)ken Wrote: I am also not technically inclined. I saw the tv news, LTA worked hand in hand with SMRT to maintain the railway track. So whose responsibility ? LTA or SMRT ? Very confusing ?

The MRT system was conceptualized, acquired and integrated by LTA. Normally, these effort cost a lot of money and use a lot of engineers and specialists. I suppose during this period, the state paid for all the costs.
When the system turns operational, the LTA engineers only need to pass on the maintenance and operating procedures to SMRT and SMRT learns to operate and maintain the MRT systems.
LTA engineers should have a better understanding of the overall design of the MRT systems than SMRT staffs. However, SMRT staffs are more familiar with day-to-day maintenance and inspection procedures.

The same analogy can be applied to Boeing and SIA engineering. Boeing designs the planes while SIA Engg maintains the planes. When things fail, Boeing has to be involved in troubleshooting.

unless it is design flaws and after years mrt is running smoothly, we can safely say that there should not be any major flaws in MRT system. Therefore, any operation failure is faults of MRT operators, be it SMRT or SBS. Time for LTA to apply stricter rules to operators of MRT.

My thoughts too, for 20 years mrt running no problem why now suddenly got problem? What is the fundamental change? The answer is change in the size of population. The original design catered to 3-4 million now needs to cater to 6 million and still expect to work like before. So they increased the frequency and it was only when they started doing this that it crashed.

I took the train on sunday when services resumed, the train moved rather slowly and I got the general impression they didn't want to push the system to the max, maybe they fear it overload

So was MRT a poor design from the beginning or is it government poor planning by bringing in too many people without considering the impact it will have on a small country like ours on housing and our transportation system.

(19-12-2011, 07:14 AM)Musicwhiz Wrote: Was reading the ST today about the SMRT breakdown. Something puzzled me here (and I am not an engineer) - the claws holding the third rail were found to have been dislodged in various places and just lying around, with sections of the thid rail sagging! How could maintenance checks on the rail NOT have picked it up? Imagine broken pieces of china/glass littering the floor - would that not have been obvious?

Methinks the maintenance only focused on certain sections and not others. It was also mentioned that the shock absorbers were last checked TEN years ago.....gosh!

My take is that they had certain maintenance checklist to follow and only checked on what was on the list. The claws part might not have been on the checklist. The problem became apparent only when things fell apart. Let's see what the Committee of Inquiry finds out..

(19-12-2011, 03:51 PM)FFNow Wrote: My take is that they had certain maintenance checklist to follow and only checked on what was on the list. The claws part might not have been on the checklist. The problem became apparent only when things fell apart. Let's see what the Committee of Inquiry finds out..

I will not be surprised that more Sh** will be digged out by COI. Typically, unless MRT has a very solid maintenance team, some procedures will be forgotten or shortcut over the last 20 years.

It is quite common since the maintenance team is changed over the years and some important procedures, unless it is well documented and emphasized, will be forgotten or ignored since everything runs fine even without following the procedures.