Denser population but more room
SMRT on train design and how S'pore compares to the rest of the world
Today Online 18 Mar 08;
Letter from Kuek Chor Ling, Manager, Corporate Marketing and Communications, SMRT Corporation
I refer to Mr Peter Wadeley's letter on space in train cars and Mr Richart Stegink's letter on train capacity.
In "Too close for comfort" (March 7), Mr Wadeley asked the reason for the new design of handrails around the train doors.
The vertical handrail around the train doors provides support for passengers near the doors. In addition, on our newly refurbished trains, the interiors provide more support for passengers.
Inside each train car, two rows of overhead horizontal handrails with hand straps placed along each row replace the single-row handrail.
Apart from these, there are seven three-way grab poles in each car for passengers to hold on to.
Regarding Mr Stegink's comment on comparing our MRT system with less crowded ones, we would like to clarify that our train system is benchmarked against the world's top operators in about 30 countries.
In terms of train loads, 70 per cent of these operators have higher planned train load than Singapore's MRT system.
In our comparison, we also considered the population density of these cities. For example, Hong Kong and Madrid have population densities of 6,352 and 5,198 persons per sq km respectively, compared to Singapore's population density of 6,369 persons per sq km.
However, the two cities have higher train loads compared to the Singapore MRT system which carries three to four passengers standing per sq m.
We thank the writers for sharing their thoughts with us.
