Live CBTC trial launched on Singapore’s North-South Line

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Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) and SMRT have begun operational trials of a new CBTC signalling system on the North-South Line (NSL).

Testing is taking place with the new signalling system, which will replace the existing fixed block signalling system, in the final hour of service.

Using CBTC signalling, headways between trains will be shortened from 120 seconds to 100 seconds, increasing peak-time capacity by 20 per cent.

The operational trials follow several months of testing during engineering hours, LTA and SMRT have said. Part of this testing period was to see how the system coped at interchange stations between the NSL and the East-West Line (EWL), which is currently undergoing a similar resignalling programme.

Announcing the start of the trial, Tan Yih Long, LTA’s re-signalling project director, said: “We will progressively trial the new signalling system during the last hour of service from 28 March, and monitor its robustness and reliability every step of the way.

“The results will help LTA decide when to extend trials to longer service hours, and eventually the full switchover of the new signalling system.”

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