A modest proposal for a better JRL
Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
When JRL Stage 1 opens in 2027, JS7 station (tentatively named Bahar Junction) may become Singapore’s most controversial MRT interchange station.
It won’t be hard to imagine why, looking at the layout of the station, where a proper cross-platform interchange is offered only for those coming from NTU to Boon Lay, and the other two require the use of a 100m long linkbridge.
This design is likely because of space constraints. However, it imposes a rather strange operating pattern on the JRL, where while some passengers may have a through ride in one direction, they’ll have to change in the other. This may ultimately reduce ridership of the JRL if people don’t deem it to be a significant improvement over switching trains at Jurong East, especially once JRL Stage 3 opens and there’s a connection to the Jurong Industrial Estate.
If people can’t get a train in Jurong Industrial Estate and stay all the way to Choa Chu Kang, will they take the JRL? Or will they stick to their old habits passing through Jurong East, and take the JRL only from Boon Lay?
And if that happens, there will not be any meaningful relief to the Jurong East gateway; or we may find ourselves running emptier trains to JS7 for the people who are going to board the JRL from Boon Lay anyway; but by operational necessity, all JRL trains must take the full loop around all three terminals.
It’s definitely not the smartest idea, but perhaps we can do something about it now.
A case for action
Hypotheticals for driving ridership are not the only reason why one should fix the JS7 interchange. Yes, there is some truth that eliminating the JS7 transfer will produce time savings that may attract more people to take the JRL more, if they can benefit from a direct trip not only in one direction, but in the other as well.
A more convenient access to Boon Lay station could also drive ridership in the vicinity of JS7 station as well. At just 1km away from Boon Lay, there may not be much of a reason to use the JRL over existing buses. Under the current status quo, someone in Jurong West Street 65 might take a bus to Boon Lay in the morning and take the JRL home in the evening. Placing a Boon Lay-bound platform closer to Street 65 may drive more to take the JRL both at the start and end of their day.
The third reason is the complete opposite of the other two— that untangling the JS7 interchange will allow capacity to be better matched to the demand that eventually materializes on each of the three JRL branches. After all, NTU is still a university with a traditional semester system — lower ridership may be seen during the summer, when students are out on exchange or internships and there is lower patronage of the JRL’s NTU branch.
The area surrounding JW2 station, as an office and industrial park forming part of the Jurong Innovation District, may also be quieter in the off peak, unlike the rest of the mainline JRL, which could still see significant off-peak traffic due to the local communities it serves.
All these reasons, put together, may allow such a complex project to eventually pay for itself. It’s not entirely a direct analogue to what the London DLR did at West India Quay station, which was meant to resolve a capacity bottleneck. Or Berlin’s Gleisdrieck U-Bahn station, where ATC was not invented 100 years ago and the area was a highly hazardous disaster-prone railway. But it achieves similar goals, increasing capacity and making the line easier to use.
Why say this now, though? It’s a combination of both seeing the JRL’s built infrastructure and the codes that they’re built to, as well as technological developments that have taken place since the JRL was designed in the mid-2010s.
For one, the use of U-trough beams may reduce the headroom needed between two adjacent tracks compared to the rather tall Segmented Box Girder used on JRL so far. This may make viaducts cheaper to construct and potentially allow us to build new ones where previously impossible. Such U-trough beams have been used to great success on Melbourne’s Level Crossing Removal Project, amongst other metro projects in India, Taiwan, and many other cities and countries I can’t recall offhand. If they’re good enough for heavy Australian freight trains, they’re good enough for the JRL.
What is to be done
What would need to be done is a series of bypasses, allowing parts of existing track space to be reused for new platforms and bypass tracks.
It’s a bit more complex than it has to be, but the main goal here is to provide a four-track corridor along Jurong West Street 64 somehow. The road is wide enough, and it remains to be seen what modern noise control technology will be implemented on the JRL that can reduce the noise made by passing trains.
Firstly, one of the existing tracks — dark blue for JS7 to Boon Lay — would need to be diverted to make way for one of the bypasses (in green). It would be new track, starting from right after the curve out of JS7 station, all the way to Boon Lay station and past it. A dedicated platform would be built here before the line connects back to the current JRL tracks.
Secondly, the first new bypass (in green) would take trains from the NTU branch to Boon Lay, branching out from just after JW1 station, and leading via the first of two new platforms to be built at JS7. It can connect back to the existing tracks in the vicinity of Boon Lay station, near where crossovers are to be built for JRL Stage 1 terminating trains. Then, the current JRL platforms can be fully allocated to the NTU branch.
Thirdly, a second, much longer bypass (in purple) would start beyond Boon Lay station (with its own platform there), taking trains from Jurong Industrial Estate out towards Choa Chu Kang by flying over the existing tracks and JS7 link bridge. This is the most extensive as new platforms would be needed at both JS7 and Boon Lay stations; to make it feasible, it may also have to be stacked above the blue track to save space.
New platforms would also need to be built at Boon Lay and JS7 stations, as seen in the khaki strips. After all, both bypass tracks would need new platforms at JS7 station, at each of the “main” and “satellite” station areas, to serve trains on both bypass tracks. As both new tracks would have to pass over significant portions of existing JRL tracks and the station linkbridge, a whole new upper platform level will need to be built.
And at Boon Lay, new platforms are necessary for trains going to and from Jurong Pier, leaving the platforms now currently being built for the NTU branch. There are plenty of ways to build the additional platforms, considering how overbuilt JRL Boon Lay station is shaping out to be; any station expansion could reuse existing station spaces for services and build platforms over the adjacent canal, which is currently decked over for road diversion.
I estimate that it may be possible to do this while keeping the line and both stations in service, for the most part. In fact, this will look a lot like the works at Tanah Merah, where only occasional closures are needed for modification works to redirect trains to the EWL’s new bypass tracks, and down the road, facilitate the testing and entry into service of the new EWL platform. Similar things will need to be done as part of such upgrading works.
See the whole thing through
But that’s a lot of work, and we’re talking about moving tracks closer to homes, as well as other disamenities caused by train traffic. While noise absorption technologies on rail tracks are arguably improving, the LTA must also convince itself that it will work.
Some might say that there is a simpler way, which involves terminating one branch at JS7 somehow, requiring two transfers from that unlucky branch to the EWL at Boon Lay or CRL at JS12. That would reduce the scope of works that need to be done significantly, building only one of the two bypasses I proposed.
To be frank, that’s even worse. Such arrangements break journeys which the JRL as designed already enables, requiring another transfer (down the 100m long bridge); not just one a day. With modern passenger behavior, this may end up driving people away from the JRL, shifting passenger traffic back to the transfers at Jurong East, or to keep people taking buses to Lakeside instead of the JRL to Boon Lay, and the JRL will not achieve anything of significance.
That should not happen. Yes, there are already many strange decisions made in our rail network planning that cause people to start claiming the rail network is poorly planned. The current state of JS7 may be one of them.
We should not add to that list. Investments made into the rail network should make trains faster and more convenient to use, not turn things into expensive boondoggles that people can then point at to say that we should be investing in other things instead. Like it or not, we will run out of bus drivers eventually. Putting self driving bus-sized vehicles on elevated guideways is how the LRT lines we have were invented, anyway.
As I have long said, there is no alternative to building rail projects. Already we are seeing unsustainably high levels of bus congestion in Boon Lay, which can only be reasonably alleviated once the JRL is able to connect passengers to Boon Lay. We may not talk about bus disruptions often because they aren’t often headline-grabbing, but it’s very possible that a single bus can cause a disruption perhaps as large a magnitude as a line-wide disruption on a major MRT line.
Once the JRL opens in 2027, things like this should be consigned to the dustbin of history, but only if the JRL itself is able to prove sufficiently attractive in reducing travel times. If the currently planned configuration means we can’t, we have the opportunity to right the wrong here. We should take it. And we should make sure that there’s actually a positive benefit in reducing travel inconveniences. But if all these are not possible, first we should do no harm.
Better yet, such a project and the engineering work needed may lay the groundwork for bringing back LRT systems to serve sprawling new towns like Tampines and Yishun, where there will be a need for faster, higher capacity public transport instead of hordes of buses. Especially when new rail lines like the CRL and Seletar Line may barely graze the edge of town and better connections are needed. The LTA can use this opportunity to better refine the infrastructure concept of the JRL, enabling similar systems to be built elsewhere.
Technology development can allow us to reverse, or at least mitigate, the impacts of decisions made previously in different planning contexts. Metros are built to last generations, and just because it was built one way doesn’t mean it can’t change.
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