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Passengers scrambling to get onto free shuttle bus due to the train service disruption on Wednesday

7 hours of train service disruption; Traffic chaos along East West Line on Wednesday morning

Martha Soezean 2018-09-19 Transport

A massive train disruption took place this morning along the East West Line (EWL) due to a track point fault at Clementi, which started at about 7am and ended around 1.50pm in the afternoon. The disruption and confusion of free shuttle buses left passengers confused and angry, who then posted a barrage of posts and tweets on the social media platforms to voice their displease and to highlight the chaos ensued from the breakdown.

On TATA SMRT Facebook platform posts from commuters stuck at Queens Town and Jurong East have started since about 7am:

Renfred Wang wrote at 7:07am: “SMRT no announcement on EWL delay. Stuck at Queens Town towards Tuas for 10 mins now.”

CoLieen Lim posted a photo at 7:14am: “Situation at Jurong East station. 7:15am.”

WB LM wrote at 7:15am: “[EWL]: Due to a track point fault at Clementi, train service between Jurong East and Clementi will be delayed for 30mins. Free regular bus service is available between JurongEast and Queenstown.”

John Robert Lee wrote that the announcement warns train service between JE and Clementi would be delayed for 30 minutes:

John Robert Lee shared a post from MRT Singapore Service Information at 7:22am; he wrote: “Yesterday, you have PSD Failure at JE because of pax try to force open the faulty PSD. Today, you have track point failure between JE and Clementi. Don’t know what’s going on but… Service between JE and Clementi will be Delayed for 30 mins and free bus services operations are available between Boon Lay And Queenstown. Do seek alternative transport if you can!”

And other passengers also posted other information on the Facebook page:

Briggs Cudal wrote at 7:24am: “Green line train Pasir Ris until Queens Town only.”

Swee Thian Sim wrote at 7:43am: “No train service on East West line.”

Nur Azlinawaty said the additional travel time needed was not 30 minutes but 45 minutes for the passengers from both the Western and Eastern regions:

Nur Azlinawaty Abdul Rahman wrote at 8:09am: “Passengers on E-W Line should add 45 mins to their travel, not the supposed 30 mins. This applies not just for those in the West. The Easterners too.”

On the Twitter platform commuters also shared information and their disappointment over the train service disruption:

At 7:10am and 7:14am SMRT tweeted its official announcements about the EWL train delay that would be for 30 minutes, free regular bus services were said to be available:

But at 7:21am minerva tweeted that the trains at Tampines have been jammed for almost 30 minutes:

Other commuters continued to ask questions and voice their complaints about the delay on Twitter:

While SMRT kept tweeting announcement to update the passengers but the problems seemed to have gone from bad to worse, from 30 minutes of additional travel time at 8:15am to 40 minutes:

Passengers were confused and complained about the free bus services; some said that the ‘free’ bus service was a lie:

Syazana Lopez gave a solution to get the free bus service:

There were also confusions caused by the announcements and notifications given by the SMRT about the locations and delay times:

And there were also many tweets from commuters asking whether they could ask for refund:

Other passengers posted photos and information of the long delay:

Julia wrote that train doors closed while there were still spaces on the train and it left the Clementi Station before people could board :

The day almost reached 11 am already but the train disruptions were still not cleared:

It was only till 1.50pm that the train services have been said to be resumed back to normal operations.

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