Retail strategy
“Be on the way” also applies to shops attempting to catch customers.
It is very easy and quite tempting to blame SMRT for the failures of its commercial outlets, especially since a past administration notably neglected the railway for the shops, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only one at fault. Many of these are rooted in decisions made 30 years ago or more.
In fact, it might be worth stating that in the heartlands, they may have seen better results from those stations at which commercial outlets were subsequently added on by themselves afterward. And even the Circle Line, at which they may have had a hand in identifying early where are the best place to place retail outlets.
Interface issues
Recently in the newspapers, there’s this:
Unfortunately, for starters, SMRT Corporation didn’t build Ion Orchard, nor did it specify the interface between the stations and the mall. It was likely the MRTC (today LTA) that had provided the provision to connect to the station at Basement 2; and at the point of land sales, it was likely URA, as land sales agent, that specified that the eventual developer could use or create such a provision instead of reserving it for some future development or MRT project or whatever. One wonders whether the Thomson Line works would have been less painful if the interchange passageway could plug in there instead of at platform level.
Well, what worked in the 1990s may not work now. Before Ion was built, the area above the station was a park, with particularly grand architecture for the aboveground structures. After all, it was a showpiece of the MRT system. That had also meant the MRTC saw fit to include a level for shopping here, notable for once having a large Popular bookstore — the precursor for Orchard Xchange.
Today, things are different — walk through Ion B2, instead of going up first, in order to get to neighbouring developments, such as Wheelock Place, through the network of Orchard Road underpasses. So foot traffic does not go upstairs; it goes through Ion where plebs get to marvel at how the 1% live. What can SMRT do? Not much, actually. In this case, I would think they may actually be better off working with LTA and Ion on selling the Orchard Xchange area to Ion — as part of the mall, it may have a better future compared to struggling alone.
This is, however, just one sad story. There are more, some with happier endings, some not.
Happily ever after?
The ones that have reasonably paid off are at Raffles Place and Esplanade. For several different reasons.
Raffles Place station is designed to function as a CD shelter. What this means is that modifications to most of the station structure to connect new linkways and such cannot be easily done. It might also explain why lift access is so awkward — for its central CBD location and ten exits, only Exit D to Republic Plaza is officially listed as handicap accessible. And that exit cannot be used on Saturday evenings and on Sundays.
Consequently, nearby buildings cannot connect to the station concourse as they do at Orchard and Tanjong Pagar (described below), and thus have to plug into the underpass level where Raffles Xchange is. That way, Raffles Xchange gained significant footfall before the current situation, by simply being in the right place.
At Esplanade, it appears to be the same when taken at face value. On paper, you can cross Nicoll Highway on foot, since traffic lights are provided between War Memorial Park, South Beach development, and Suntec City. But typically nobody does that, and with its direct connections to Raffles City and Citylink Mall basements, B1 of Esplanade station itself forms a key connection between various buildings. The same can probably be said for several other Circle Line stations such as Holland Village.
However, the same cannot be said at Dhoby Ghaut, and perhaps Tanjong Pagar.
Dhoby Ghaut’s main issue lies in being in the middle of nowhere. Sure, it has a layout like Raffles Place with a level of shops between the street and the NSL ticket concourse, but the exits leading to that level aren’t exactly well-placed. The main bus stop on Orchard Road is on the NEL side of the station and leads directly to NEL concourse level. You could argue that Exit A can still reach The Cathay and Exit B to the Penang Road bus stop, but that’s not a lot of people, and the lift in the middle of the park heads straight down to concourse level.
Same for Tanjong Pagar. Like Raffles Place, there is only one handicapped exit, and that leads through Guoco Tower — directly connected to MRT concourse level at B2. While at least there are a network of underpasses that connect to B1, placement of the shops relative to the entrance to the MRT proper is relatively poor.
Have lessons been learnt?
While they were learnt by SMRT, as we see at Esplanade, Holland Village, and the other heartland stations with shops built later, they were probably not at several DTL3 stations, namely Expo, Upper Changi, Tampines, Jalan Besar, and Bencoolen. All these stations have significant parts of “linkway” levels dedicated to retail with not much good reason for people to walk through them. Three years after the line opened, it is either that SBST has not been able to attract tenants; or that they have simply opted not to bother, since it’s not even listed in the “for lease” section of their website.
These linkway/underpass levels likely exist because the cut and cover construction method, as well as depth, of the stations meant they had to be dug up anyway, and if they weren’t built, it means more backfilling to do. That’s the original sin: why did the line have to be that deep in the first place to justify three levels or even four? And if it was necessary to build multiple levels, shouldn’t the opportunity to compact station operations into the vertical space be taken?
But what’s built is built. At a stretch, they could replace aboveground bridges or traffic lights, especially when the MRT isn’t running. Instead of shuttering the MRT exits at ground level, it may only be necessary to close the access point to the station from the linkway, allowing the linkway to act as a pedestrian underpass — something like the Initial System at Tiong Bahru, Braddell, and perhaps Toa Payoh amongst others. The potential to be allowed to operate 24 hours could be a good selling point.
We can probably say the same for Orchard Boulevard, Great World, and Havelock stations on TEL3, at least based on renders. Although the same indicate that there may not be shops there, things could have changed. Compared to an architectural feature wall or something, a shop could at least bring in some non-fare revenue and make the space more useful. Some of these learning points might apply to larger CRL stations as well; JRL stations may be too small to have much benefit. Although, for the JRL, an approach similar to Pioneer can be taken with expanded linkbridges hosting shops.
Change the rules?
Whatever we say won’t change the fact that most of these shops are outside the retail area, not inside. Transfer rules for the most part won’t allow people to break a journey to leave the paid area to patronize shops. Should we put them inside the gates, then? People changing trains at Bugis, where the smell of freshly baked bread from the bakery upstairs permeates the transfer linkway, might understand this.
This is probably another case of the rules perhaps being too strict for their own good — there aren’t even bins in the stations to discard things, and only with TEL are there handicap toilets in the paid areas (apart from Lavender and Bugis), let alone regular toilets. Counterterrorism issues with the bins may be dealt with with the London approach of a transparent bag draped from a hoop, but that might not be acceptable here with the focus on aesthetics. This is important to me because solving the bins and toilets issues would have to come first before any talk about retail.
To me, the prohibition on eating or drinking in paid areas is a non-issue, since the rule can be waived at least within the shop itself. Or better yet, grab and go concepts may allow people to buy something on their way and eat it once out of the gates at their destination. It’s not like bringing food on the train is prohibited, anyway. A starter could thus perhaps be vending machines on platforms or at transfer linkways.
But I don’t think going much further makes any sense, since tenancies may only be limited to convenience store chains, light snacks, and/or bubble tea with the kind of expected clientele, all of which likely can be serviced with vending machines too. For starters, every shop needs electricity, water supply, and water drainage. The latter two would be an issue to route in paid areas for the most part. Food shops where cooking takes place additionally require fume extraction to remove food odors, which is even more difficult to add underground after the fact.
Looking outward?
This is a trait shared with other subway systems as well, where land use is already maximized by placing stations under roads or with potential for overhead development. Comparisons with Japanese private railways don’t really work because the Japanese private railways build their on land already occupied for their (mostly aboveground) railway uses and which can’t be reused for much.
However, of note are the underground shopping streets in several other Asian cities. Taipei, in particular, has two underground shopping streets located over cut and cover train tunnels — which also have to be built here in the case of sidings. With the use of cut and cover train tunnels along DTL1 between Bayfront and Chinatown, it might have been a good idea to do the same here too.
Using the same argument as above (if you need to dig up the land already, why fill it back?), there’s such spaces being created at Marine Parade as well with a siding to be built in the area; though it remains to be seen what to do with it. Unlike our overseas examples or even the SMRT heartland station shops, it would be difficult to do anything retail-wise, seeing as there wouldn’t be significant footfall due to the area being “out of the way” with only one TEL station exit at its end, and almost halfway to the next station.
Maybe that’s why they brought in the NGOs.
