TECHNOLOGY, MANPOWER CHALLENGES
Beyond scheduling constraints, Mr Siow highlighted other hurdles in maintaining and upgrading the rail system.
One is the slow pace of technological advancement in public transport. While metro systems are typically state-of-the-art when first opened, they soon become outdated.
“Technology moves very quickly, but legacy systems cannot be upgraded easily,” he said.
Although sensors that track real-time performance have become cheaper, retrofitting older systems to collect such data remains difficult and costly. Many maintenance tasks also remain manual, such as tunnel inspections.
