If Singapore’s metro is improving, why the delays?

Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan in July said preliminary data showed trains travelled 393,000km on average before encountering a delay of more than five minutes in the first six months of this year, from an average of 133,000km in 2015.

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Singaporean commuters who spoke to This Week in Asia in the Lion City this week said their experience from daily commutes was not in sync with the data. “When you go home at 6pm or 7pm, at the back of your mind you are praying there is not going to be another signalling fault or track fault or train fault or door fault that is going make you late,” said one commuter. 

Despite the improvement in reliability, “major disruptions, which force commuters onto bus bridging services and/or make people late for appointments, still happen frequently enough that it’s part of many commuters’ experiences with public transport,” said Walter Theseira, a transport economist with the Singapore University of Social Sciences. “So the official statistics are not going to feel very relevant when a disruption happens to you personally,” he added. 

Khaw, an influential lieutenant of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and chairman of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), has previously slammed journalists for their reporting of train reliability and breakdowns. One of the key gripes of officials is that delays caused by the trial on one major line of a sophisticated new signalling system – which will allow the network to increase train frequency – are being perceived by the media and commuters as a consequence of poor maintenance.