Roll-out of latest MRT fleet on North-South, East-West lines complete

SINGAPORE – The roll-out of the newest trains on the North-South and East-West MRT lines (NSEWL) is now complete, with the last of the seventh-generation fleet entering service from Sept 30.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said in a Facebook post on Sept 30 that it has handed over the 106th train from the Alstom Movia R151 fleet to SMRT, which operates NSEWL, Singapore’s oldest and most heavily used rail lines.

LTA purchased 66 of the 106 R151 trains in a $1.2 billion deal in 2018 to replace the first-generation NSEWL Kawasaki Heavy Industry trains, which had been operating since the two MRT lines opened in 1987.

These have been phased out of service, with the last of the 66 first-generation trains plying the NSEWL for a final time on Sept 26, 2025.

Another 40 trains, costing $337.8 million, were bought in 2020 to replace now-retired second-generation Siemens and third-generation Kawasaki-Nippon Sharyo trains.

The first R151 trains entered service in June 2023.

As at June 2025, more than half of the R151 trains had entered service, a spokesperson for LTA told The Straits Times at the time.

Designed in Germany, the new R151 trains were assembled in Changchun, China.

They have built-in condition monitoring capabilities and diagnostic systems that can pick up faults early and track the performance of various systems in real time.

The cars have bigger open spaces to increase passenger capacity while maintaining the number of seats. Other upgrades on board include wider windows and perch seats for passengers.

Alongside the R151, three other generations of trains, added between 2011 and 2018, are also operating on the NSEWL. These were manufactured by Kawasaki Heavy Industries and CSR Qingdao Sifang.

Work to renew the NSEWL started in 2012. Valued at $2.6 billion, the refurbishment included new trains, a new signalling system that allows trains to run at shorter intervals, upgraded power rails that supply electricity to the trains, and a track circuit system capable of detecting rail defects.

LTA said in 2025 that the improvements have boosted the NSEWL’s reliability, captured by the lines’ mean kilometres between failure (MKBF), which is the reliability benchmark used for subways globally.

MKBF shows how far a train travels before it encounters a delay lasting more than five minutes. LTA’s figures are based on a 12-month moving average.

MRT trains clocked 2.88 million MKBF between September 2025 and August 2026, LTA said in its latest rail reliability report, released earlier in September.

This is almost triple Singapore’s rail reliability target for the entire MRT network of one million MKBF.