Finally, A Sensible MRT Train Improvement~!

Eric Banana was taking the MRT train from Orchard to City Hall yesterday when he noticed that something was amiss - the advertisement panels on top of the train doors were gone! Hmmm, bye bye advertising dollars :P Saying hello was an active route map. SMRT calls it STARIS, which stands for SMRT Active Route Map Information System. Oh, anyone could have *erm* figured that out. In addition to the active route maps, there are also Vacuum Fluorescent Displays (VFDs), which show a multi-language transcript of audio announcements.

Actually, Eric Banana considers STARIS to be a lagging improvement, as opposed to a leading improvement (that is, "Singapore is the first country in the world to ______"). While AstroBanana were in Hong Kong last year, they observed a similar system on their MTR trains and Eric Banana thought it was really useful. He wondered back then how come MRT trains in Singapore, which supposedly incorporate all the best features of subway trains around the world, did not have such a system. Then again, Eric Banana is a laggard too. Apparently, STARIS came into place in November 2008. Hmmm, guess he only managed to hop onto STARIS-free trains in the past few months (C'mon, only two trains with STARIS in service - what are the odds?!)

Some people will argue that STARIS is not useful because there is already an audio announcement system in place. Before the train reaches a MRT station, there will be an announcement to indicate what the upcoming station is. This is repeated when the train stops at the station. STARIS is a blessing to people with impaired hearing, as well as those people who are plugged on earphones to prevent themselves from going mad from exposure to the impossibly noisy train crowd. Of course, there are also the extremely blur people who only figure out what station it is just before the doors close and attempt to do an Olympic-worth mad rush while avoiding being sliced apart by the doors.

While Eric Banana thinks that STARIS is particularly helpful to tourists, it is definitely useful for Singaporeans as well. Those who want to go to a certain MRT station can track their journey and know how far or near they are from their destination stop. Also, not everyone memorises the entire MRT network map. The typical commuter will probably be familiar with a particular section due to daily commute from home to work, but may not know the other sections of the MRT network. Like Eric Banana knows the West section like the back of his hand, but is hopeless with any station in the East section - he thinks they are called Bugis, dunnowhat, stilldunnowhat, fareast, furthereast, yetfurthereast, amithereyet, wasitthelaststation, shouldiaskothers, mencannnotaskfordirections, shouldijumpoffhere....

Well, at least STARIS represents a more sensible MRT train improvement than removing 30% of the seats from MRT trains. While admittedly more people can be crammed into the trains during peak hours, those people who have a genuine need to sit down are deprived of 84 seats on each train. Very considerate of an aging population's needs - let them stand and be sandwiched by the train crowd. Don't even get Eric Banana started on that one time when ALL the seats were removed from certain cars of each train.