The Land Transport Authority has defended its decision to make new orders for trains from the Kawasaki-Sifang consortium that produced the defective C151A MRT trains.
This, despite the C151A trains being found to have cracks, and manufactured from contaminated metal.
The LTA says that it engaged Kawasaki-Sifang to supply 91 trains for the Thomson-East Coast Line because it showed “a high level of responsiveness and strong sense of responsibility in addressing the issue” of C151A trains defects, and that the issue was “resolved conclusively”.
The defects were known by the LTA when it awarded the new contract to Kawasaki-Sifang in 2014.
The LTA said that the Kawasaki-Sifang consortium won out of six bidders for the Thomson-East Coast Line trains as it provided the best overall offer based on price, quality and life-cycle costs.
It added that “more and more trains are being produced in China”, and that it was “becoming the norm”.
From the experience of the C151A trains, the LTA said bolsters of new trains will be supplied by Japanese supplier Kobe Steel.
The LTA said that there was no correlation to train delays of more than five minutes to the hairline cracks found on C151A trains, and that most of the delays since 2014 were the result of signalling faults, door or brake issues.
It said that even when trains were being repaired, there were always enough trains to meet demand, for example, there are 140 trains available in 2016 for the North-South and East-West lines and 124 trains are needed to meet demand.
