BTS stations crowded as signal system breaks down during rush-hour

[Jonmarleesco]

9 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

I happened to be walking back from Central Embassy to the Ploenchit BTS station a few days ago at the end of the business day, (last Weds. I believe) and ran into a LONG LONG queue of people not waiting for buying tickets, but just to get thru the ticket gate, est. about 100 people long.

 

The queue was so long I couldn't see from the end of it whether the queue was to buy tickets or waiting to get thru the gate, so I had to walk forward a long ways just to see what the queue was for, and then walk back to the end of the queue to get in line. Along the way, I decided to go downstairs and walk the rest of the way for the rest of my intended journey.

 

Obviously, there's going to be an exodus of office workers in that area at the end of the business day, but I'd never seen a queue like that at Ploenchit station before, so perhaps I was running into one of the multitude of line problems that BTS has had in the past month. Or, equally possible, their failure to open enough inbound entry gates to accommodate the evening rush hour influx.

The second probably. They really are unbelievably incompetent.

[Jonmarleesco]

8 hours ago, mtls2005 said:

It's been a tough month for the BTS with issues on:

 

6 June

12 June

13 June

15 June

18 June

22 June (two separate problems)

24 June

and today, 25 June again two separate issues

 

Platform door malfunctions, signaling system outage, power loss are the issues I've seen referenced. With delays ranging up to 65+ minutes.

 

And things (number of issues) seem to be getting worse, definitely the worst month since February 2018.

 

 

Tough on BTS. Tougher for the customer.

[Jonmarleesco]

13 hours ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

The picture and your your text does not match!

Central Embassy was not build back when the BTS first opened on December 5th 1999.

That's not Central Embassy. It's Central Chidlom.

[Jonmarleesco]

11 hours ago, Just Weird said:

Rubbish.  How many increases have there been in, say, the last five years more than a couple of baht and how exactly is the service worsening (this signal malfunction excepted)?

I doubt the service is worsening ... it could only get better.

[CLW]

 
I happened to be walking back from Central Embassy to the Ploenchit BTS station a few days ago at the end of the business day, (last Weds. I believe) and ran into a LONG LONG queue of people not waiting for buying tickets, but just to get thru the ticket gate, est. about 100 people long.
 
The queue was so long I couldn't see from the end of it whether the queue was to buy tickets or waiting to get thru the gate, so I had to walk forward a long ways just to see what the queue was for, and then walk back to the end of the queue to get in line. Along the way, I decided to go downstairs and walk the rest of the way for the rest of my intended journey.
 
Obviously, there's going to be an exodus of office workers in that area at the end of the business day, but I'd never seen a queue like that at Ploenchit station before, so perhaps I was running into one of the multitude of line problems that BTS has had in the past month. Or, equally possible, their failure to open enough inbound entry gates to accommodate the evening rush hour influx.

I also don't understand the small number of ticket machines that accept bills (only for BTS) or machines in general that allow to top up your card and / or work with credit / bank cards.
I was recently in Xi'an, that's china's third largest city. They have currently two subway lines but much more passengers. The station layout with average four exits is similar to MRT.
Per station they have one tiny ticket booth manned with one clerk.
Everything else is done by a vast number of ticket machines.

[anon537687643]

Pathetic not fit for purpose system! Mass transport ? Glad I don’t live along Sukhumvit . A choice of traffic jams or this comedic run train!


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[mtls2005]

Problems continue this morning, with the BTS tweeting the now standard 

 

"due to system failure. The Sukhumvit Line and Silom Line will affect some of the trains traveling through Siam Station. Delayed about 10 minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience."

 

and

 

"Notification of the train interruption between Chong Nonsi and Surasak stations I'm in the process of accelerating. The train will be delayed for 10 minutes."

 

and

 

"due to mandate signal failure in Sukhumvit and Silom line Impact on the train, some trains at low speed and parked at a station longer than usual. Sorry for the inconvenience."

 

 

It seems obvious they're not sure what exactly is going on, or how to address the issue(s).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 26, 2018 by mtls2005

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

48 minutes ago, mtls2005 said:

Problems continue this morning, with the BTS tweeting the now standard 

 

"due to system failure. The Sukhumvit Line and Silom Line will affect some of the trains traveling through Siam Station. Delayed about 10 minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience."

 

and

 

"Notification of the train interruption between Chong Nonsi and Surasak stations I'm in the process of accelerating. The train will be delayed for 10 minutes."

 

and

 

"due to mandate signal failure in Sukhumvit and Silom line Impact on the train, some trains at low speed and parked at a station longer than usual. Sorry for the inconvenience."

 

 

It seems obvious they're not sure what exactly is going on, or how to address the issue(s).

 

BTS's approach to public communication is kind of "interesting," shall we say.

 

AFAICT, their consumer website and the "news" section there pretty much never carries any content relating to their service problems/outages. Same with the "news" section on their corporate website, which is all PR and CSR. And likewise with their Facebook page, which is filled with marketing and PR posts, and not much else. You could read all that, and never know anything amiss is occurring.

 

But then of course, I was reading the corporation's latest annual report last night, and was particularly amazed by its discussion on the BTS's accessibility for the disabled. To read their description, you'd think BTS was winning some kind of awards for the excellent and comprehensive job they've done in making BTS accessible for people with disabilities -- when in fact, of course, the reality is exactly the opposite.

 

 

[Mattd]

4 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

and was particularly amazed by its discussion on the BTS's accessibility for the disabled

Yes, I can't imagine the difficulties a disabled person must face trying to use the BTS.

[brewsterbudgen]

I don't understand why people even bother waiting on the streets to get on the BTS. You know that the train is broken, its hot outside, you are just wasting time - just grab a cab or bike and off to your next destination. People rather save that 50-100 baht and wait 1-2 hours to get on a broken train? lol

The lines for taxis are longer than the lines at the BTS stations.

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[brewsterbudgen]

6.15 a.m? They didn't have it resolved some 10 hours later. It's supposedly a service. The BTS's so-called management needs to learn the meaning of the word, service. But I shan't hold my breath.

It's the same today. Trains every "10 minutes", in reality much longer, and long waits to push on to overcrowded trains.

They expect to solve the problem "by Friday". [emoji36]

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[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 hour ago, mtls2005 said:

Problems continue this morning, with the BTS tweeting the now standard 

 

 

MTLS, you really didn't do them justice....

 

As of my count now at about 9 am, the BTS had seven different tweets this morning between just 6 and 9 am about service problems/delays, mostly relating to their apparently faulty signaling system.  Several times they tweeted that the problem had been fixed, only to be followed by more tweets about continuing delays, before now at 8:57 am saying things are "getting back to normal state...."

 

Such as first this following earlier tweets of problems:

06.52 the mandate system in the Silom line and Sukhumvit Line has been successfully fixed. Getting back to normal state

 

And then just minutes later, this:

07.18 the system mandate in the Silom line. The impact to some of the trains has been delayed for about 10 minutes, sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Yeesh!!!!

[charmonman]

5 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

MTLS, you really didn't do them justice....

 

As of my count now at about 9 am, the BTS had seven different tweets this morning between just 6 and 9 am about service problems/delays, mostly relating to their apparently faulty signaling system.  Several times they tweeted that the problem had been fixed, only to be followed by more tweets about continuing delays, before now at 8:57 am saying things are "getting back to normal state...."

 

Such as first this following earlier tweets of problems:

06.52 the mandate system in the Silom line and Sukhumvit Line has been successfully fixed. Getting back to normal state

 

And then just minutes later, this:

07.18 the system mandate in the Silom line. The impact to some of the trains has been delayed for about 10 minutes, sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Yeesh!!!!

When they say the trains have been delayed by ten minutes what they should be saying that the trains sit idle at each station for ten minutes. If you’re trying to go from say Asoke to Victory Monument the delay is over an hour.

[mtls2005]

9 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

MTLS, you really didn't do them justice....

 

I only quoted the tweets available at the time.

 

It seems like they've also had a train breakdown earlier this morning on the Silom line, in addition to the standard daily signaling system problem?

 

I think the BTSC is over-compensating in an effort to provide information, however useless it may be, to overcome complaints about little or no information for the public?

 

I do love how they mention problems on the Sukhumvit and Silom lines, as if those aren't the only lines they operate.

 

Maybe they should just use the poop emoji?

[Mattd]

Must be still having issues, a guy I work with just sent me a message saying he will be late in again due to the BTS is crap, he gets on at Ari and reckons that there are hundreds waiting with only 6 getting off the last train, trains every 12 minutes, average stop time at Ari BTS being 6 minutes.

[mtls2005]

4 minutes ago, charmonman said:

When they say the trains have been delayed by ten minutes what they should be saying that the trains sit idle at each station for ten minutes. If you’re trying to go from say Asoke to Victory Monument the delay is over an hour.

 

Yes, it seems like the total journey delay calculation is (n-1)*10, where n is the total number of stations your trip involves. 

[brewsterbudgen]

No end in sight...

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[TallGuyJohninBKK]

31 minutes ago, brewsterbudgen said:

No end in sight...

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Quote

Since the start of this year, there have been a total of 27 breakdowns and extended delays on the BTS system, which handles more than 900,000 passengers per day, with yesterday’s delays lasting more than four hours in the morning rush-hour and affecting tens of thousands of passengers. There have been as many as eight delays this month alone.

 

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30348600

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Quote

 

The repeating problems have been caused by interference from other nearby radio frequencies, including those used by mobile phone operators in business and tourist districts, he said. The company has only two options: to shut down the entire system or to switch off the automatic train management system and operate the trains manually.

Once trains are manually managed, service frequencies have to be reduced sharply, resulting in extended delays and long queues of passengers spilling on to streets at some stations.

 

 

I don't understand the radio interference issue as an excuse. I mean, it's not like cell phones or cell phone towers suddenly just popped up in BKK in the past few months. They've been omnipresent here for years.

 

Or did some of the government's recent frequency allocations for mobile service somehow start stepping on the BTS's radio bands?  Somehow, I don't think we're getting the whole or accurate story here.

 

[Crossy]

2 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Or did some of the government's recent frequency allocations for mobile service somehow start stepping on the BTS's radio bands?  Somehow, I don't think we're getting the whole or accurate story here.

DTAC just activated a 2.3GHz tower near Siam. The train control is on 2.4GHz.

 

There's another thread on DTAC denying everything (no surprise there).

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

3 minutes ago, Crossy said:

DTAC just activated a 2.3GHz tower near Siam. The train control is on 2.4GHz.

 

There's another thread on DTAC denying everything (no surprise there).

 

 

They have the BTS train control signaling system on the same band that's omnipresent used for internet wifi signals?

 

[Crossy]

2 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

They have the BTS train control signaling system on the same band that's omnipresent used for internet wifi signals?

Yup, I've posted in the "DTAC denys all" thread.

[mtls2005]

20 minutes ago, Crossy said:

There's another thread on DTAC denying everything (no surprise there).

 

Well, this spectrum is owned by TOT, and 60% of it was licensed to DTAC - TOT is of course a government organization. And there was a lengthy trial - like months and months in/around Siam. Not sayin' this isn't the cause, but it should be very easy to sort out. Turn off 2300 MHz for a day, see if the "trains run on time"? FWIW, I've seen Band 40/2300 MHz in every BTS station, which of course makes sense as these are the densest areas of mobile users.

 

 

15 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

They have the BTS train control signaling system on the same band that's omnipresent used for internet wifi signals?

 

Every time I use my garage door opener the BTS train stops. My bad.

 

 

Edited June 26, 2018 by mtls2005

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Thanks Crossy. You were referring to this:

 

 

And this:

 

Quote

A Chulalongkorn University engineering lecturer has hinted that the inference might be caused by the 2,300 MHz bandwidth mobile signal because skytrains use 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radio signals for WiFi communications in the automatic traffic management system.

 

Yup, better put away that garage door opener, MTLS... Or the BTS police are going to come knocking on your door....

[mtls2005]

We'll have to switch our electronic devices to "BTS Mode" - for those following at home that would be "Off".

 

 

[ExpatOilWorker]

9 hours ago, Jonmarleesco said:

That's not Central Embassy. It's Central Chidlom.

Actually it is both!

[Mattd]

23 minutes ago, Crossy said:

DTAC just activated a 2.3GHz tower near Siam. The train control is on 2.4GHz.

 

There's another thread on DTAC denying everything (no surprise there).

 

Would be pretty easy to confirm either way, turn off the tower and see what happens.

 

 

[cat handler]

On 6/25/2018 at 11:38 AM, MaxLee said:

What,..... again????...... How many more times in a million smile-land-lifetimes.......  

It’s  a regular occurrence everywhere in the world.

[cat handler]

Aren’t the signals an automatic signalling system connected by fibre optic cable, so when a train passes a signal that signal turns red and the previous signal clear to yellow? The only time train control would be involved would be at turnouts where he would operate the points and as far a seat I can see that would be at a terminal stations when the train crosses from the up track to the down track for the return movement. All intermediate signals operate automatically. 

[DM07]

An old man, two 6 year old's and a three legged donkey in Outer Mongolia, could run a better public transport!