He said the number of service disruptions on MRT1 fell from 46 in 2022 to 38 in 2023, with only nine incidents recorded up to May this year.

“Peak hour intervals have also improved, decreasing from six minutes in 2022 to 5.4 minutes in 2023, and now standing at 4.2 minutes,” he said in his winding-up speech of the debate on the auditor-general’s (A-G’s) report released on July 4.

Loke also said ridership has seen a consistent rise, recording an average of 239,000 passengers on weekdays up to May 2024.

This is a substantial increase from the 61,000 passengers in 2021, 139,000 in 2022 and 204,000 in 2023, he added.

Last Thursday, Loke said the ministry was addressing the shortcomings in MRT1 and MRT2 services, which have not met targets for passenger numbers, peak hour train frequency and rolling stock inventory.

“For Prasarana, we have put in place a key performance indicator system in terms of ‘mean kilometre between failures’ to reduce breakdowns,” he said, adding that this is to ensure that MRT and LRT services are more reliable.

The A-G’s report released last week found that MRT1 and MRT2 had not met their targets for daily ridership, train operations and peak hour frequency.

The report highlighted that the average daily ridership for MRT 1 from 2017 to 2023 ranged from 10.8% to 37.4% of the projected targets.

The highest achievement was in 2019, with 175,213 passengers daily against a target of 469,000 (37.4%).

In 2021, only 10.8% of the target was met, with 53,624 passengers daily instead of 495,000. In 2023, the average daily ridership was 182,196, or 35% of the 520,000 target.

Additionally, the frequency of MRT1 trains during peak hours fell short, with only 32 trains operating every five minutes in 2023, against a target of 48 trains every three minutes.