The Land Transport Authority (LTA) on Sep 5 released a rail service reliability report covering the last 12 months to June 2025, highlighting that Singapore’s MRT network ranked second-most reliable when compared to overseas metros of Taipei, Hong Kong, and New York City.
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For the first time, LTA compared the reliability performances of overseas metros against the Singapore MRT using the Mean Kilometres Between Failure (MKBF) metric, which is an internationally recognised indicator for rail reliability and the one used in Singapore.
The MKBF is the average distance that a train travels before it encounters a delay exceeding 5 minutes. LTA had set the target of 1 million train-km for the Singapore MRT network, where an MRT train has to travel 1 million km before encountering a service delay of over 5 minutes.
Overseas metro operators in Hong Kong and Taipei also use MKBF, but in car-km. Thus, to align with them, LTA converted its train-km figures to car-km by multiplying the total number of carriages per train on the respective MRT lines.
Six-car trains run on the North-South Line (NSL), East-West Line (EWL), and North East Line (NEL), while three-car trains run on the Circle Line (CCL) and Downtown Line (DTL).
Based on the latest publicly available MKBF data, the Singapore MRT ranked second place, ahead of the Hong Kong MTR and New York City Subway, but behind the Taipei Metro.
| Source: Land Transport Authority | ||
| Metro System | Date Range (latest publicly available) |
MKBF (car-km) |
| Taipei Metro | Jan 2023 – Dec 2023 | 19,116,000 |
| Singapore MRT | Jul 2024 – Jun 2025 | 7,701,000 |
| Hong Kong MTR | Apr 2025 – Jun 2025 | 4,289,769 |
| New York City Subway | Jul 2024 – Jun 2025 | 187,000 |
LTA also provided another comparison that showed the number of disruptions resulting in delays exceeding 30 minutes that occurred on the Japanese metros.
In 2023, the Singapore MRT ranked third, ahead of Osaka Metro, Tokyo City (Toei Subway), and Yokohama Subway, but behind Nagoya Subway and Tokyo City (Tokyo Metro).
| Source: Land Transport Authority | |||
| Metro System | Number of Service Delays >30 mins per million train-km |
||
| 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
| Nagoya Subway | 0.08 | 0.17 | 0.09 |
| Tokyo City (Tokyo Metro) | 0.18 | 0.37 | 0.11 |
| Singapore MRT | 0.08 | 0.18 | 0.13 |
| Osaka Metro | 0.26 | 0.36 | 0.41 |
| Tokyo City (Toei Subway) | 0.23 | 0.47 | 0.47 |
| Yokohama Subway | 1.03 | 1.17 | 0.78 |
Rail reliability figures for the overall MRT network dropped to their lowest since 2020
On average, the overall MRT network clocked 1.598 million train-km before encountering a delay that exceeded 5 minutes in the last 12 months, from July 2024 to June 2025. This figure is the lowest since 2020, when the MKBF was 1.451 million train-km.
| Source: Land Transport Authority | ||||||
| 12-month moving average of mean distance travelled between failures (MKBF) >5 mins (‘000) |
||||||
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | Jul 2024 – Jun 2025 | |
| MRT Overall | 1,451 | 1,994 | 2,089 | 2,077 | 1,982 | 1,598 |
| NSL | 1,082 | 1,976 | 1,651 | 1,409 | 2,485 | 1,237 |
| EWL | 1,258 | 1,454 | 2,038 | 3,363 | 1,687 | 1,444 |
| NEL | 2,040 | 2,064 | 2,064 | 2,063 | 4,101 | 4,229 |
| CCL | 1,733 | 1,826 | 1,840 | 1,209 | 919 | 1,069 |
| DTL | 2,090 | 4,188 | 4,050 | 8,124 | 8,131 | 4,118 |
The full report, which includes figures on the number of service delays exceeding 30 minutes and rail service reliability statistics on the LRT network, is available for public viewing on LTA’s website.
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Related Links
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External Links
Performance of Rail Service Reliability (2Q2025) – LTA
Images: SGTrains.
This article first appeared on SGTrains.