East-West Line disruption 'Inconvenient and messy': Thousands face longer journeys

Snaking queues for bus bridging services; some confused by shuttle train operations

- Esther Loi, Fatmah Khan and Wong Yang

It took Mr Joel Tan more than 30 minutes to reach the front of the queue for the bus bridging service in Buona Vista near the train station, after a full day's work at the Singapore General Hospital.

The 27-year-old healthcare worker was travelling home towards Jurong East from Outram Park MRT station, and had started queueing for the bus bridging service along North Buona Vista Drive at about 7.10pm on Sept 25.

He knew the East-West Line (EWL) train service disruption that day would extend his commute home by about an hour. He had also expected it to be chaotic since it was the rush hour.

But he was "not too bothered" as there was a continuous stream of buses.

Mr Tan was among thousands of passengers whose journeys were affected by a long-drawn service disruption between Boon Lay and Queenstown MRT stations on the EWL that lasted nearly a day, starting from around 9.30am.

The disruption would persist into Sept 26, with no train services between Jurong East and Buona Vista stations in both directions, said the Land Transport Authority.

Free regular bus and bus bridging services between the affected stations were provided from around 10am.

At around 2.45pm, SMRT, which operates the EWL, announced that it would run separate shuttle train services at intervals of 10 minutes between Buona Vista and Queenstown stations, and between Jurong East and Boon Lay stations, from 5pm till the end of service to cater to evening peak-period travel.

But some passengers were confused by the shuttle train operations.

For instance, trains from the city going towards Buona Vista station did not go all the way there.

They stopped at Queenstown station, where passengers had to alight to take the shuttle train from Queenstown to Buona Vista.

The shuttle train would then head back to Queenstown, where it would stop for passengers to alight. Passengers heading to the city had to transfer to another train.