Depot capacity
It’s not just whether you provide it, but where you provide it and how you provide it.
Cost control advocates like to take the headline price tag of our Circle Line 6 and run scary headlines about government waste and other such matters. Admittedly, I may have fallen victim to that myself at some point or another. Sure, there’s always something we can improve on, but there are also other ways in which our hands are tied.
A significant portion of the CCL6 cost comes from the $1.2 billion cost of the Kim Chuan Depot expansion; take that away and correspondingly reduce the price tag of the CCL6 systemwide contracts, and you probably can halve the project cost to a more manageable sum. If there’s ever a call for value engineering, could this be one of the first to go, or at least to be cut significantly?
There may be some precedent — on the RTS, the new maintenance facility at Wadi Hana will only store four trains based on public display information, despite eight being procured for the entire service. It may not be a stretch to say that the massive Woodlands North site may also include several sidings to store the remaining trains, but then there’s also always the possibility of just leaving them directly at the platforms — something that would probably have to happen under Pakatan’s extreme austerity, with perhaps only a single heavy overhaul track (and, if they were lucky, a second examination track)
Can we, though?
With the Circle line fleet projected to grow up to 87, the existing Kim Chuan Depot won’t be able to fit all of them. Furthermore, given the amount of trains launched from Tai Seng Facility Building on the eastern side of the DTL, it’s a fair assumption to make that some parts of KCD are also used for storing DTL trains; thus reducing further the capacity available to the Circle.
That means several trains will likely have to spend the night elsewhere. This is probably what already happens anyway, in order to provide an earlier first train and later last train at the other end of the circle. It should come as no surprise that two sidings are provided very close together at that other end of the circle; at one-north and at Pasir Panjang. Additional trains can probably be stored on the tail tracks past HarbourFront, and perhaps elsewhere within the CCL6 area. On the DTL, same thing; the sidings at Rochor, Fort Canning and Mattar can possibly also house additional early morning trains, given the distance from the central area to either Gali Batu depot or the East Coast Integrated Depot.
But we have what we have with the depot expansion, which is planned to significantly increase the amount of space available in the depot to store more trains. 130 is probably going to be more than enough after Stage 6, and if whatever future line using the Prince Edward phantoms becomes a branch of the Circle line, that too.
Yet we also see the same amount of overkill with the JRL. Tengah Depot stores 100 trains and the Peng Kang stabling facility probably around 20–30 (10 tracks lead into it based on the URA Masterplan, though probably lesser can be used for storage if there’s a maintenance track too). Given the pinched design of the JRL, the case for the facility makes sense given the roundabout way needed to access the NTU branch from Tengah Depot proper. But would one really need such a large facility, especially considering that the overrun tracks can also be used to store trains?
Maybe the additional trains needed for the West Coast extension might help fill up the space, although I can’t help but think if it might be a better idea to have a separate facility for that too, or at the very least, some storage tracks in the vicinity of Haw Par Villa station.
Never his mind on where he was
The main justification I hear is that this excess in capacity is meant to provide space for renewals and fleet upgrades. In other words, they wish to avoid a situation like today where older trains have to be scrapped first before the R151s can come in, possibly because it could be quite undesirable. The idea is that you build out all the capacity you need the first time, so you don’t have to come back and top up here and there.
It’s a financial sum: do you build just what you need now and then pay again later for more, or do you just go ham and even do what you don’t need? Personally, the former is fine with me, but that perhaps has to come with a rethink on how depot space is used.
The current expectation is that every train on the line, whether it’s needed for service or not, has a place in the depot. It’s an assumption that holds true for newer lines, especially with the mega ECID that will store around 220 trains across 3 lines — if evenly split, that’s around 75 spaces for each of the 3 lines. Maybe only the EWL level would only need the space — and maybe not if the plan for an expanded Ulu Pandan Depot comes true — but it raises the question of why one would build so much space if it’s not going to be used for a significant portion of the time.
If we really do want to adopt the thinking that land is precious and needs to be conserved, we can probably start by rethinking this assumption. Already it’s common for trains to be parked overnight at stations far away from the depot in order to provide an earlier start of service. By factoring such possibilities into the calculations of providing depot space, it may be possible to actually reduce the amount of space that has to be built out at the beginning.
If land constraints place depots that far out anyway such that this has to be done, why not just factor it into the planning anyway? Furthermore, since we’re already willing to sink S$500 million into holes into the ground, a small siding complex, like that at Marina South Pier or Orchard TEL, could help to provide better service in the central area as well, catering to people who need to move outwards from their residences in the central area early in the day, or in the return direction late at night — quite a possibility with the government’s intent to dilute the office mix in the central area and introduce other land uses.
A delicate dance
One might wonder why they don’t buy any more vehicles for the BPLRT. It’s a balancing act, I would say — in midday with Service A out of service, there are vehicles parked along the Service A tracks, and it’s also occasionally possible to see a train switched off and sitting at Choa Chu Kang platforms 2/4.
Also, despite only being fully operational at the end of 2024, the ITTC will have to be done early at the end of 2022 (or maybe even in 2023) to support testing and commissioning activities of the CCL6 trains. My personal suspicion is that its role may go even further than that; it will also have to be a temporary storage yard for the CCL6 trains after commissioning activities while they wait for their permanent home at the KCD Extension to be complete — and even the timeline for that may depend on when the DTL can leave the facilities at KCD it’s probably borrowing, or in other words, when the ECID can be completed.
But that’s what I just said was a good thing, right? Why is it a bad thing now? The key is, as always, is to do everything in moderation. The CCL and BPLRT depots are simply too tiny. Pictures of the BPLRT depot show a facility that could probably fit around 20 vehicles at most — enough for the 19 initial vehicles, not enough for the 32 on the line today. The closure of Ten Mile Junction might allow a few more vehicles to be shoehorned in, but that might be pretty much it. And by the looks of it, married-pairs like what is being ordered for the SPLRT may also not be possible with the lifting jacks fitting only a single vehicle.
Speaking of which, the near-tripling in size of the SPLRT depot might mean something, too. Perhaps an excess of tracks being provided in this much larger expansion might represent a future increase to 3-car trains, which would naturally need more space to store. A single 6-car long track could store three married pairs, or just two 3-car long tracks. And who knows? More trains could be on the horizon to allow for increased service as well, when the time comes.
But if you ask me, there’s that, and there’s going all ham with enough space to store the trains needed for 90 second headways, and 10% of spare trains above that according to international standards, and *then* still have plenty left over. That is quite different, the latter of which might then not be a very smart thing to do.
Unless, of course, you want to talk about lengthening MRT trains especially on the 3-car lines — which, like at the LRT, means an individual storage track can house lesser trains — but the necessity and possibility of that is probably another topic for another day, if it hasn’t already been discussed here.
