French firm wins $32m contract to replace, install 1,350 MRT fare gates
The work will be done over 7 years; contract with Thales includes Jurong Region Line gates
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French technology firm Thales announced yesterday that it had won a contract to replace and install 1,350 fare gates at MRT stations here over the next seven years.
The $31.68 million contract will see fare gates on the North-South, East-West and Circle lines replaced. Thales will also provide gates for the upcoming Jurong Region Line, which is expected to open in three stages from 2027, and be fully operational in 2029.
A Land Transport Authority (LTA) spokesman said that the replacement is needed as the fare gates on the North-South, East-West and Circle lines are approaching the end of their operational lifespan, and some parts will become obsolete, making maintenance a challenge.
Replacement work, which will take place during non-operating hours and thus will not affect commuters, will be completed by July 2026.
Fare gates on the North East Line were replaced in 2018, while the Downtown Line's gates will be due for replacement only in 2028.
The spokesman said the new gates come with slimmer swing flaps opening in the direction of commuter travel, as opposed to retractable ones.
Thales added that the gates will be designed in a modular fashion for ease of upgrading when necessary.
Separately, rail operator SMRT said yesterday that it is deploying a predictive maintenance system for the Circle Line, in a bid to improve rail reliability.
This follows the successful implementation of the system on the North-South and East-West lines, said SMRT, in a joint statement with American infrastructure engineering software firm Bentley Systems.
The system, which was fully implemented on the two lines in March last year, has helped SMRT achieve a rail reliability target of more than one million kilometres between failure across 282km of track on the North-South and East-West lines, where failure is defined as a service delay of more than five minutes.
The Predictive Decision Support System acts as data repository for SMRT, as well as an analytics tool. For a start, it pulled four years of SMRT data such as asset configuration information, inspection records and operating data.
The system then processes, analyses and allows users to visualise such data, giving them the information needed to prioritise maintenance and repair works.
Compared with manual data input and planning, the system is about twice as fast, and data collated on it is accessible to engineers on the ground, as the system is cloud-based.
In addition, Bentley Systems and SMRT's business arm Strides Engineering announced they had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to jointly market a rail predictive maintenance solution in Asia-Pacific.
Meanwhile, ST Engineering and MSI Global, a wholly owned LTA subsidiary, announced yesterday that they had signed an MOU about participating and collaborating on rail projects globally.
Both companies will jointly provide rail electronics solutions and services for rail projects overseas.
Correction note: An earlier version of this story had suggested that the Jurong Region Line will begin operations in 2029. This is inaccurate. It will begin operations in three stages from 2027, and be fully operational in 2029. We are sorry for the error.
