News starting trickling in through twitter at about 8pm today (25 Apr) that a power trip had hit parts of the North-South (NSL) and the East-West (EWL) lines of the MRT system. Blogger Darryl Kang twitted at 8pm, “Dover MRT station celebrating Earth Hour? How come all lights turned off.”
BUKIT GOMBAK MRT BLACKOUT! pic.twitter.com/9WVX8R6hVt
— Fina Nabila ♡ (@Finakitty) April 25, 2016
About 10 minutes alter, at 8.11pm, SMRT tweeted that there was no train service between Joo Koon and Bugis on EWL, between Woodlands and Jurong East on NSL due to traction power fault.
Services were restored about 30 minutes after the reports of power trip started surfacing on social media. SMRT said that the disruptions were due to a traction power fault.
Social media users have said that power outages have also hit the Bukit Panjang LRT stations. They also said that the trains were moving very slowly and that there was no air-con in some of the affected trains. There have been no reports however of fare gantry failures in the affected stations.
Singapore Democratic Party’s candidate for the coming by-election in Bukit Batok, Dr Chee Soon Juan, also shared about the power outage at the Bukit Batok MRT station in his Facebook.
SMRT has provided free bus service for commuters affected by the power outage.