Friday, June 5, 2009

Seats removed from MRT trains

I went up the MRT train and observe that most of the seats were removed in one carriage. This allows more people to be packed into the carriage, as they have to stand.

I am somewhat sad to see this approach towards increasing the capacity of the train. The other approach is to run more trains, at shorter frequency. The train operator operated to increase its profit, at the expense of comfort of the commuters. The authority allowed them to adopt this approach. 

Who is looking after the interest of commuters?

4 comments:

  1. The best thing is for govt to take over the whole train system to run it on cost recovery basis rather than on profit maximising motive.

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  2. +1 to the cost recovery basic

    how many country is earning profit on public transport?

    But I felt that Seats removed from train are not just meant to increase capacity, in some sense it help wheel-chair bounded people to have a space in the train too.

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  3. The MRT is already at peak capacity, with trains coming every 2 minutes. The signalling systems are old and in dire need for upgrade, so that it can handle trains coming at higher frequency. The circle line can have trains coming every one and a half minutes.

    I believe removing of seats is a temporary measure before the government do something about the outdated MRT...

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