SBS Transit’s Group CEO, Jeffrey Sim, has issued a public apology following the significant breakdown of the North East Line (NEL) and LRT services on 12 August, which left thousands of commuters stranded for hours.
Sim explained that the service outage, which lasted over three hours for the NEL, was caused by a power trip at one of the depot substations. Preliminary investigations revealed that a power switchboard failure triggered a “flashover” in a voltage transformer, which in turn caused both the main and backup power supplies to trip as a protective measure.
The disruption began at around 11am, halting train services between Farrer Park and Punggol Coast. Engineers traced the fault to the damaged transformer, which could not be repaired on-site. To restore operations, they rerouted power from another substation. Full NEL services resumed at 2:10pm, with bridging buses deployed during the outage.
Extended LRT Downtime Due to Safety Checks
The power fault also disrupted the Sengkang-Punggol LRT lines. Although partial service resumed earlier in the afternoon, engineers operated the LRT on a single track for both loops initially to avoid overloading the temporary power supply.
Comprehensive safety checks and system restarts delayed full restoration until 9:20pm, with the Sengkang LRT returning to normal service at 3:34pm and the Punggol LRT at 4:04pm.
Sim assured commuters that SBS Transit will work closely with the Land Transport Authority (LTA) to prevent future occurrences, adding: “We apologise to all affected commuters for the inconvenience caused.”
Impact on Commuters and Broader Implications
The mid-day breakdown caused heavy congestion at affected stations, with long queues for shuttle buses and delays spilling into the evening peak hours. The incident also sparked renewed discussion online about Singapore’s rail reliability and the need for redundancy in critical power infrastructure.
Rail analysts note that while transformer flashovers are rare, they highlight the importance of robust maintenance schedules and quick-response recovery systems to minimise downtime during unexpected failures.
SBS Transit and the LTA are expected to release a full investigation report in the coming weeks.