LTA should stop spinning tales of its own Potemkin success...

[bic_cherry]

LTA should stop praising its own Potemkin statistics...

LTA mistaken in the way it measures breakdowns (incidents per km travel) when one train down might mean 10 or more trains disabled??? ??? To LTA, government is all about spin and Potemkin statistics..?!....

From my reading, LTA is trying to say that the number of breakdowns, not the number of people inconvenienced/ the severity of each breakdown is more important???!!!

Looks like if the LTA PR person had her way, she would choose a massive Total MRT shut down at one go rather than some localized problems at say two small scale breakdowns at some far flung less utilized line: e.g. Changi-Airport line and bukit Batok LRT line which inconveniences fewer people: simply because a total shutdown is considered one breakdown incident but the latter as two incidents even if a total shutdown inconveniences many many more people than a few localized breakdowns. (Or prefer one accident with 100 fatalities rather than 10 accidents with zero fatalities simply because statistics counted simply the number of accidents/ incidents!!!???)
These folks are the heartless experts of spin.

So much for hiring overpaid scholars to praise the government endlessly. Everything looks fine on select KPI, but certainly, I think more civil servants and political leaders need to take public transport or cycle to work: good for the environment and good for their health. And also so that they can create more realistic policies like cycling to improve health by widening bus lanes and giving bus captains additional training in safely overtaking cyclist on widened bus lanes so more can cycle to work: that would be much more sustainable in the long run than mathematical acrobatics we see here just to prove the Singapore MRT is better than New York subway when they have no idea how our transportation system sucks (police and ambulances regularly get stuck in traffic jams) and the number of people inconvenienced each time the MRT experience a massive breakdown (a substantial number of occasions in recent times being severe delays/ shut downs during peak period of travel and even lasting till the next day...).
http://www.straitstimes.com/premium...rate-comparison-rail-reliability-lta-20140312

The Straits Times, Published on Mar 12, 2014
Inaccurate comparison of rail reliability: LTA
THE article ("Reliability of MRT key to having fewer cars on roads"; Feb 13) alleged that Singapore's MRT system is less reliable than the New York City Subway, through a comparison that our MRT had one breakdown every 120,000km while New York's had one every 260,000km. This is incorrect and unfortunately was repeated in the commentary ("Public transport: No. 1 in the world?"; last Saturday).
New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority measures train reliability using car-kilometres whereas Singapore uses train-kilometres. On Singapore's six- and three-car systems, one train-km is equivalent to six car-km and three car-km respectively.
If our six-car train encounters a fault after 100,000km, it would be reflected in our statistics as having failed once after 100,000 train-km. However, if we convert this to car-km, the six-car train would have experienced a fault after 600,000 car-km. Similarly, for a three-car train that encounters a fault after 100,000 train-km, it would be reflected as having failed after 300,000 car-km.
Hence, comparing like with like, Singapore's rail reliability would be more, not less, reliable than New York's by a considerable margin. Our MRT network experienced one delay longer than five minutes for every 456,000 car-km operated last year, compared with New York's one in 247,000 car-km.
Notwithstanding this, we acknowledge that there is work to be done to improve our rail network reliability. SMRT and SBS Transit have ramped up their engineering capabilities and processes, hired more engineers and significantly increased investment in maintenance.
The Land Transport Authority is also working with the two operators to strengthen their maintenance regimes to actively monitor the condition of their assets, predict where problems are most likely to occur, and take pre-emptive steps where required.
Helen Lim (Ms)
Director, Media Relations
Land Transport Authority
Copyright © 2014 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.
http://www.straitstimes.com/premium/forum-letters/story/inaccurate-comparison-rail-reliability-lta-20140312

Disassembling GRC system benefits PAP (Part 1 of 3):

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[bic_cherry]

Re: LTA should stop praising its own Potemkin statistics...

What to do nobody praise LTA? The only way is to spin and praise themselves.

A better way of counting will also be %of passenger trips disrupted: severe, moderate and minor as a fraction of total trips per year etc. Severe= death/ injury of passengers, Moderate means more than half hour delay/ to inability to reach destination by original means planned. Minor means slight delay of less than half hour only. This is because 'incident' can mean anything from slight delay to total shut down for the day/ one week as might be the case if terror attack or severe derailment occurs etc.

Thus a week long disruption, whilst being just ONE incident, will be considered much more disruptive based upon usual commuter numbers: now inconvenienced as opposed to just a slight delay caused by maybe ONE nuisance kid toying with the train stop mechanism that is quickly solved (10mins delay and scolding to kid etc)...

That said, cycling as means of transport should be encouraged: would impress the tourist as well as make the local population more fit over time, besides teaching the world what sustainable living really is rather than a race to the bottom in terms of GDP numbers and the causation of air, etc pollution which would ultimately kill us all.