Barely a day after causing chaos during the peak hour morning yesterday from a train fault at the East-West Line (EWL), an unrelated train fault has occurred on the North-South Line (NSL) during the rush-hour morning today (Oct 25). Government-owned train operator SMRT published on Facebook and Twitter at 5am today reporting a train fault between Yishun and Toa Payoh, and advised that train service will delay by 20 minutes.
At 7am, SMRT posted an update saying that train service has been slowed for “safety reason”. There is no clarification what safety concerns were there:
“North-South Line trains towards the city are travelling at a reduced speed from Ang Mo Kio to Bishan for safety reasons.”
Commuters living in Singapore’s north heading to the city central were advised to take the East-West Line from Jurong East. However this created overcrowding in the already jam-packed East West Line.
Singapore is currently overpopulated at 5.6 million, with the train system infrastructure giving way as early as 2010 where the population reached 5 million. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is however dissatisfied with the economic limitation, and vowed to increase the population to 6.9 million.