Friday, August 17, 2018

New signal system for MRT

About six months ago, I put out a post to comment on the $195 million that was spent on the new signal system for the North South and East West lines.

I find the cost to be very high. I also considered it to be too sophisticated. Worse, I hypothesized that the new signal system was the cause of the breakdowns.

Why?

When you use a sophisticated system to manage the trains, it needs to have reliable signals. If any of the signals are not received or appear to be contradictory, the sophisticated system will not work. It does not want to be responsible for causing a major accident.

If the train was driven by a human being, the driver would be able to exercise judgment to determine if the train was in danger.

The driver could be assisted by an anti collision device to prevent the train from crashing into the train in front, in case the driver was not paying attention.

I consider this approach to be better, i.e. to have a driver to driver the train and be assisted by anti-collision sensors.

Initially, there were a few train stoppages due to signal fault. I attributed them directly to the signal system.

Later, I observed that more of the stoppages and delays were caused by train fault, train fault and to power faults.

Even if there was a track fault, the trains could still run. Similarly, if there was a train fault, it would affect only one train and that train could be taken off. A power fault is likely to cause the signal system to slow down the train.

Ultimately, all the faults affect the signal system. If the trains were driven by people, they would probably be able to respond without causing the delay that are mandated by a driver-less system.

I may be wrong, but I suspect that many of the stoppages and delays were connected to the signal system.

If I am right, what can be done about it? We can still revert to having the trains largely driven by people.

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