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SINGAPORE – The Land Transport Authority (LTA) is investigating why a backup fibre-optic cable meant to transmit bus location data failed to function as intended after construction works damaged several cables and caused disruptions to the bus arrival timing system in April.

The damaged cables also caused an extensive broadband outage in parts of Singapore.

Acting Transport Minister Jeffrey Siow said on May 6 in a written reply to a parliamentary question by Workers’ Party MP He Ting Ru (Sengkang GRC) that such data is transmitted through dedicated pairs of fibre-optic cables, which are designed to re-route data to a backup if the primary cable fails.

However, not all the bus location data was sent to a central server on April 18 after Asia Piling damaged several fibre-optic cables, including one responsible for transmitting information about buses.

As a result, the bus arrival timing system operated at only 70 per cent capacity for the rest of the day, said Mr Siow. This led to inaccurate bus timings and long wait times being displayed at bus stops and on mobile apps.

Full functionality was restored only after the damaged cable was repaired.

Investigations showed there were no hardware or software malfunctions, and the issue was unrelated to a separate outage that