85% of bus arrival time system to be restored by Jan 28; full recovery by early next week
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LTA has finished manually updating the firmware for 3,000 affected buses.
ST PHOTO: SHINTARO TAY
- Singapore's bus arrival system will reach 85% functionality by Jan 28, after disruptions caused by a memory cache build-up in bus systems.
- LTA identified 1,000 more buses needing manual updates, delaying full system recovery to early next week, beyond the initial Jan 26 estimate.
- The issue, affecting nearly half the bus fleet, caused inaccurate timings; LTA is reconfiguring systems and clearing caches while apologising for delays.
AI generated
SINGAPORE – The expected time of arrival system used to communicate bus timings on bus stop displays and apps will be fully restored by early next week, after another 1,000 buses were identified as needing manual firmware updates.
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said 85 per cent of the system will be restored by the morning of Jan 28.
The authority had earlier announced an expected recovery date of Jan 26
Providing this update in a press statement on Jan 27, LTA said it has finished manually updating the firmware for 3,000 affected buses, which were identified in the week of Jan 19.
Updates to the additional 1,000 buses will be completed over the course of the week, since this process can take place only after service hours.
Bus services will continue to operate as scheduled, it said.
LTA first detected an issue on Jan 10 that resulted in inaccurate bus timings and longer wait times being displayed to commuters.
It initially said this was caused by an intermittent transmission issue with the on-board systems of some buses.
It moved to reset the system from 8pm on Jan 21, and bus arrival timings were unavailable until the start of passenger service on Jan 23.
The authority previously said that over 60 per cent of these timings would be available on the system from Jan 23.
Even after switching on the bus arrival system on Jan 23 for testing and stabilisation, LTA said that bus arrival timings would not be fully available or accurate.
Later, the authority discovered issues affecting the estimated timings for about half of the entire bus fleet in Singapore, caused by a memory cache build-up in some on-board bus systems.
Typically, a cache stores data that is frequently used to retrieve information more quickly. But as the cache stores more and more data, it could result in systems behaving more sluggishly – and potentially glitching or crashing.
The memory cache build-up disrupted data transmissions between buses and the central servers that compute the estimated arrival times.
Reconfiguring the system and clearing the cache on affected buses involved physically servicing the devices on these vehicles, which was estimated to take about four days – starting from Jan 23 – to resolve.
According to checks by The Straits Times at around 4pm on Jan 27, LTA’s app MyTransport.SG displayed relatively normal bus timings – with intervals of around seven to 15 minutes between each bus – for many services.
“We thank commuters for their patience as we continue working on resolving the issue and apologise for the inconvenience caused,” said LTA.
