MRT-3 records new longest “no offloading” streak; no incident of passenger unloading for the last 31 days

(Eagle News) — The Metro Rail Transit Line 3 (MRT-3) announced a new record of the longest “no offloading” streak for its railway system, as it said that for one whole month or for 31 days, there had been no train that had bogged down during a trip that would require passenger unloading.

The MRT-3 said that for 31 consecutive days, or from October 16 to November 15, 2018, there had been no unloading incident in the railway system.

This surpassed the 29 consecutive days without unloading incidents that MRT had achieved from July 4 to August 1, 2018, according to the the Department of Transportation-MRT-3 (DOTr MRT-3) on Friday, Nov. 16.

“We attribute the 31-day no-offloading streak of MRT-3 to three things. These are: regular maintenance works of our trains to make sure that we give our commuters a safe and reliable transport every day; availability of spare parts taking note that we are only using original spare parts for our trains; and focus and teamwork,” DOTr MRT-3 said in a statement.

The MRT-3 runs an average of 15 trains daily serving some 300,000 passengers.

The DOTr said it expects the MRT operations to even improve further on the third quarter of 2019.

This is following the MRT-3 upgrade which will start by January 2019. The upgrade will last for about three and a half years.

Sumitomo-Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is also set to take over the railway system’s rehabilitation and maintenance. It was the same consortium which designed and built the MRT-3 from 1998 to 2000. It maintained the railway system from 2000 to 2012.

The Department of Finance and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) also recently signed an PHP18 billion (38-billion Japanese yen) loan agreement for the MRT rehabilitation project.