Punctuality, passenger impact among new rail reliability gauges

Move follows acting minister's call for more data to give public fuller picture

- Esther Loi

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) has released data on three new rail reliability indicators, with one of them showing that more than 99 per cent of trains ran on time in September.

Published in the latest rail reliability report on Nov 14, the new indicators are the punctuality of trains, the impact of train disruptions on passengers, and the proportion of train services that operate according to schedule.

These metrics are tracked as part of internal regulatory standards that the authority uses to monitor the performance of rail operators.

The release of the metrics comes after Acting Transport Minister Jeffrey Siow told Parliament on Sept 22 that he had asked LTA to give the public more data for a fuller picture of rail performance.

Singapore's rail reliability is mainly measured by mean kilometres between failure (MKBF), which captures the distance a train travels before encountering a delay of more than five minutes. It, however, does not reflect the actual impact on passengers.

The first new indicator, which evaluates the punctuality of trains, complements MKBF by tracking the consistency of rail operations as well as the predictability of journeys and waiting times, said LTA.

It measures the percentage of trips completed within two minutes of the scheduled time.

LTA's latest figures show that 99.16 per cent of trains completed their scheduled trips within two minutes of their scheduled times in September, up from 98.91 per cent in August.

The authority noted that this figure is comparable to those of major metros overseas, such as the Taipei Metro, which registered 99.41 per cent in train punctuality in 2023.