A multi-year programme to renew NSEWL – Singapore’s oldest and most heavily used – will cost more than $2.5 billion. The renewal programme began in 2013, and is expected to be completed by 2024. The scale of this effort underlines the critical importance of the MRT network to the transport infrastructure of a competitive and liveable Singapore. Since its inception in 1987, the train system has come to be identified with public transport mobility in a way that buses were in a simpler age. Now, more than 130 stations across five MRT lines span the island. This 200km system has a daily ridership of over three million. Complementing the rail system are two LRT systems. The MRT’s centrality in the public transport infrastructure is an everyday fact of life. The expenditure on renewing the two lines needs to be seen in this larger context. The MRT system has travelled a long way since 2011, when two massive breakdowns highlighted shortfalls in maintenance and infrastructural upgrades. The recovery of reliability since those dismal times is a credit to the public transport authorities.... Continue Reading