Commuters alight from the Sustainable Singapore Blueprint-themed MRT train that arrived at the Newton MRT station.
Train services on the Downtown Line (DTL) were delayed on Wednesday (May 3) morning due to a signalling fault believed to be caused by a faulty platform door at Botanic Gardens.
In an update on Twitter at 9.37am, SBS Transit, the line’s operator, said that trains will bypass Botanic Gardens station towards Chinatown, adding that commuters should transfer at Tan Kah Kee and Stevens to continue their journeys.
It said that train services from Chinatown towards Bukit Panjang are operating normally.
The Straits Times understands that the signalling fault was caused by a faulty platform door at Botanic Gardens station.
When The Straits Times visited Botanic Gardens station at around 10.30am, station staff were advising passengers on how to get to their destinations. Staff members were also present at the Tan Kah Kee and Stevens stations to offer help.
At Stevens, passengers exiting trains who wished to proceed to the lower platform to change train directions were allowed to do so without tapping out.
In an earlier post on Twitter at around 7.45am, SBS Transit said commuters can expect an additional 10 minutes’ travel time.
Commuters on Twitter, however, said that the additional travelling time was as long as 30 minutes, with trains stopping for about 10 minutes at each station.
The Straits Times has contacted SBS Transit for more information.
One of the commuters affected by the delay was student Shaunak Kumar Roy, 23, who had intended to switch trains from Little India to Clarke Quay for his classes which begin at 10am. “Now I’m going to be 10 to 15 minutes late,” he said.
NTU undergraduate Andrew Lim, 24, took the DTL around 8.50am, but the train he was on did not move for more than five minutes.
It took him 40 minutes to travel from Bukit Panjang to Newton, twice as long as it usually takes, he said, adding that the train skipped Botanic Gardens station and stopped for around one minute at every stop.
“I think they shouldn’t tell us it is a 10 minute delay when it’s clearly already taking so much longer,” Mr Lim said.
Train services on the DTL suffered a two-hour delay in October 2016 due to a platform screen door fault which occurred at the Sixth Avenue station. An investigation revealed that a loose bolt had caused a platform screen door to become dislodged from its frame, causing the unhinged door to come into contact with the side of an approaching train.
The DTL, Singapore’s fifth Mass Rapid Transit line, is opening in three stages. The present network with the DTL1 and DTL2, which opened in 2013 and 2015 respectively, stretches from Bukit Panjang to Chinatown. The DTL3 is expected to open by the end of 2017.
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