A 15-minute disruption led to a delay of up to 40 minutes for rush-hour commuters at the Jurong East MRT interchange Tuesday morning.

The incident occurred when SMRT pulled a faulty train out of service at around 8am, causing a disruption that rippled down to other train services following behind. SMRT said even though service intervals were between two and three minutes, they could not clear the passenger load that built up quickly on the platform from that one train withdrawal.

Disruptions and delays have been fairly common at Jurong East - an interchange for the heavily used North-south and East-west lines - despite extensive modification works done to it to free up a bottleneck.

This is because it remains the only major interchange that is above ground and exposed to the elements. Hence when it rains, trains will also have to slow down because of the longer braking distance they require in the wet. The drop in speed translates to longer service frequency, and thus, crowd build-up.