MRT BreakDown!! Free, Foc, July 7th 2015

(People were just swarming onto the bus, it was totally chaotic but understandable.)

The evening is around 7pm, I am on “internal line” bus feeder service. Not suspecting, any possible Earth shaking event in Singapore, as per norm, I pulled into the Admiralty Station to pick-up passengers. To my surprise, a large crowd rushed forward to the bus, and I almost suffered a-near- miss accident with the passengers. The minute, I opened the front door to board the pax; I heard a lady was shouting, “ is this a free bus to ferry us to the Woodlands Regional Interchange”. My reply, no, no, not “free”. She then walked away from the bus. Immediately, another lady, shouted back at me and says that, there is a MRT breakdown. Ooops !, sorry, pei se lor. I quickly, announced to all, still standing near the front to board and it is “free, foc”.

Here comes the most misunderstanding, although most bus were equip with techie devices like ICC and GRPS monitored, it may not be that “live” for us to know, due to lack or delay of information on what is actually happening in real time, it seem that we could need a better universal broadcast system in place, also we cannot use our smart gadgets while driving. 

Well the rest is history, the MRT services for North, South, East and West are all down from around 1845hr to 2230hr. Looking at the scale of the breakdown one can easily deduce that this was an nation wide event and affect more than 50%  of the public transport available and capability strength, it was truly a disaster, details can be read from www.straitstimes.com .

However, I wish to add a bit more from real personal experience for your reading pleasure.

It was so touching to see one of my regular customer a Mother, been waited upon by her husband and a 2years old son sitting at the bus stop for her late coming home. Usually she will board my service bus at around 7pm, but tonight, it is already 10pm. The moment she got disembark from the bus, her son, is with open arm to be hugged.

The inter town or “external line” bus services are the worst lot. All packed like sardines or tuna in a brine tin can. My trip interval bio-break has been cut short to run as frequent as possible to cope with the gigantic pax load. Furthermore, to complicate further, some buses will re-deployed to help to ferry and balance up the overall national pax backlogged across the whole Island. For example, the service that, I am servicing during peak hours, will have 5 buses running at a fix period, 1 bus was re-deployed to do other service. Those Time Keeper and Starter are indeed the Heroes of the Night. Kudos to them.

Free and complimentary services provided from around 7pm till 0130hr. since I am doing the last bus trip at 0100hr, there was this man pax, it is already 0118hr, he is so consumed by the breakdown frustration, anger and in convince caused, that, the moment, he boarded the bus at Admiralty Station, I looked at him and announce that it is “free, foc”. Do you know, what he said to back me… “free, uh, so what”, I want to complaint”. In my heart, I said “Boodly hell”, please be my guest and complaint…I guess that’s life.