From the angry to the sarcastic, Singapore’s frustrated train commuters have taken to Facebook pages – real and fake – to vent their unhappiness at the massive train disruption yesterday. Thousands of commuters were left stranded when train services on segments of the North-South line were disrupted during yesterday’s evening peak travelling hours.
Folks on one particular train, trapped in a tunnel between stations, resorted to smashing a fire extinguisher at a window to get fresh air, after power came off and the air conditioning went offline. They then hiked to the nearest station in a dimly-lit tunnel, during the latest but one of the most serious disruptions to the city’s train services.
Today, Internet users were fast to vent their anger at SMRT on the social media space, whether this was through a fake SMRT Facebook page set up by online pranksters or on SMRT’s own page.
On the fake SMRT page, called SMRT Ltd (Feedback), people are seen pouring scorn at the transport operator.
Facebook user, Harul Fariz, asked: “If SMRT cannot handle these few existing lines without any major disruptions, can we expect more of the same to happen when more new lines appear as the complexity of the systems increases?”
Clearly angry, another user, Aaron Ang, suggested that SMRT work with the Singapore tourism authorities to build a fun ride. “Oh wait. Here’s a suggestion. Why don’t you work with STPB to come out with a ‘Uniquely Singapore’ attraction: Come experience the thrills and excitement of suffocating in a train, breaking a window, walking through tunnels in a WORLD-CLASS SMRT train!”
Over at a real SMRT Facebook page, the Ride SMRT page, commuters too were unhappy.
Said Facebook user Kenny Giam: “SMRT must be held accounted for what has happened on 15th Dec. You guys pride themselves as First World Transportation but in truth, SMRT is worst than than even third world countries.
“In your eyes, profit and money are the only things you people care about. First Increase Cab Fare and then when the mrt break down, start to send out information to all your cabs to rush down to grab “income opportunity”. This is like trying to make profit from people or country’s plight. Totally unethical!! Its like the shame of the country!”
It didn’t help, of course, that SMRT had sent out some rather insensitive-sounding advice yesterday to its taxi fleet, which it also operates along with the trains.
It is understandable that SMRT wanted to direct taxis towards MRT stations to alleviate the human jam, but coming days after highly unpopular taxi price hikes, the announcement of an “income opportunity” read like SMRT was coordinating its resources to fleece helpless commuters in a time of crisis.
To its credit, SMRT has since apologised for this particular mess-up, explaining that the message was sent from a template. While the anger is going to take a long time to assuage, perhaps what stands out amid the unhappiness on Facebook is that some commuters are grateful for the efforts of the rank and file staff who had to work overnight to restore and ready train services for today – even if this was posted on the fake page.
Said Facebook user, Ryan Joseph: “Kudos to the engineers and all the other men and women on the ground. As for the senior management .. enjoy your jolly good salaries in unique little Singapore with no competition.”
The fake SMRT page response is much funnier than the real one!