Confabulate With Winfred

Background What is the current situation? The handrails in public trains are important safety features to help commuters keep their balance. We discovered there are issues on the handrail regarding the hygiene and the obstruction in posses.The problem situation that we have decided to address, occurs in any Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) Trains in Singapore. This could be better elaborated by narrowing our views during peak hours (From 7am to 8am and 6pm-7pm), commuters would be seen rushing in and out of the carriage to board the train upon arrival. How did you become aware of this problem and/or related issues? As daily users of MRT, we have noticed some of the problems commuters experiences when taking MRT. We have realised that the current handrail design is causing discomfort to the commuters as well as some hygiene issues. What is the context of the problem? Given the average height of Singaporean male is 171cm. Some commuters find the handrails to be an obstruc...

In the article “Dubbed the ‘best in class’: 6 things about Hong Kong's MTR rail system”, Lee (2015) stated that Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan claims that Hong Kong’s Mass transit railway (MTR) is the ‘best in class’. Mr Khaw recommended that SMRT and SBS use MTR as a parameter for “reliability standard”. According to Lee (2015), here are 6 points to note about MTR. Firstly, MTR is amongst the most lucrative rail system globally, in 2014 MTR generated S$2.82 billion of revenue from transportation and property. Secondly, Hong Kong’s whole railway system is 55km longer than that of Singapore’s . Thirdly, MTR trains are punctual 99.9% of the time which is 3.9% better than Singapore although both countries experience similar number of serious train disruptions. Fourthly, MTRC allocated 37% of their profits to rail “maintenance, renewals and service improvements”, compared to Singapore’s 19% . On top of that, MTR conducts maintenance routines once every 3 days, which is more frequent...

In the article “Dubbed the ‘best in class’: 6 things about Hong Kong's MTR rail system”, Lee (2015) reported that Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan claims that Hong Kong’s MTR is the ‘best in class’. Mr Khaw then further complimented Hong Kong’s rail system stating that SMRT and SBS transit should adopt Hong Kong’s practices. Examples are the Hong Kong government’s privatization of the MTR Corporation(MTRC) in 2000, which led to a decrease in budget and an increase in the competency of the public transportation. This provides room for the MTRC to allocate 37% of their profits to rail “maintenance, renewals and service improvements”, which is adequate as compared to Singapore’s 19%, as claimed by Mr Khaw. While the MTR has 155 stations across nine prime travelling lines over 221km, maintenance is conducted via a mobile transportation unit that scans for irregularities through “ultrasonic techniques” once every 3 days. This is more extensive than Singapore’s inspection routine d...