The Great Wall of Tengah
A practical case study of what happened to our rail development.
While some might say the northeast is a prime example of how our short and medium-term transportation policies have failed, I can’t help but think that Tengah is a better example. Already people have moved into over eight thousand BTO units developed here. Yet, the JRL, originally promised by 2025, will only fully open three years later in 2028.
On the other hand, many of the problems in the northeast can be fixed by running more trains — which has been enabled by Punggol Coast station, and will be enabled by the impending entry into service of 2-car LRT vehicles. More macro policy issues, like restrictions on car ownership forcing more into public transport, will affect Tengah too.
If anything, the northeast started out strong, with the transport infrastructure largely already there before the development. That’s not the case in Tengah, where transport service ignomously began with a free shuttle bus provided by the HDB — the complete opposite of “white elephant” MRT stations that people have been complaining about not even 10 years ago.
In the meantime, the LTA’s solution is to throw buses at the problem. Is it sustainable?
But in future, so that we don't have to do this again, all levels of government must realize the importance of getting our MRT projects - especially new lines - built on time.
What took them so long?
Previous Transport Minister Yeo Cheow Tong first announced the JRL in 2001. Arguably, the JRL has become a serious victim of scope creep. Extensions of the EWL to Joo Koon and Tuas have done quite a fair bit of the job that the JRL was meant to do.
In exchange, the JRL goes to Tengah and Choa Chu Kang as well, reducing the impact of the Jurong East gateway. That might have result in many of the early 2000s work being thrown out the window — where while work may have been planned to start on the JRL at the same time as the Bukit Timah line, now DTL2, that is no longer the case. Instead, the JRL will open a full 10 years after DTL2.
Though, to be fair, Minister Yeo’s Eastern Region Line will also be completed in 2026, with TEL Stage 5 and DTL3 Extension connecting both lines to Sungei Bedok station to close the loop.
In the meantime, however, the LTA has had to throw buses at Tengah in order to handle the needs of residents that have moved in over the past year. In what may be efforts to curb bus dependency and facilitate an easier transition to the JRL when it happens, many routes from Tengah don’t go any further than 1 or 2 MRT lines away.
Routes like 870 thus mainly fill the JRL sized hole in Tengah’s public transport system, instead of providing extensive bus transport links that may eventually be lost when bus network reform does eventually come. Still, with the urban densityof Tengah and Bukit Batok West, this is a lot of people.
Is this sustainable? It’s not only the formal Tengah New Town. Bukit Batok West estate is also growing, and already as part of Tengah-related bus network implementations, one could see concerns — I don’t know if it can be called moral panics — over the renumbering of 945 to 992 and its corresponding extension into Tengah.
Arguably, some might say that this is only so visible because it’s Tengah, and the PR branding and importance that the HDB has attached to its last “New Town”. And it is true. Places like Fernvale/Jalan Kayu and Yishun East have similar issues, and with barely anything in sight apart from bus dependency. The Seletar line just feels so far away and there’s nothing for Yishun East, not even LRT.
But even so, further afield, things aren’t rosy either. New rail projects are also needed to increase public transport accessibility. Phase 1 of the West Coast Extension will only be complete in the “late 2030s”. Without that, it’s two transfers from Tengah to the CRL. Never mind other projects like the Tengah Line further down the road, which at current timelines may be at least 20 years away. People in Tengah can hardly wait 20 years.
This is clearly important enough for PM Lawrence Wong to appoint Minister Chan Chun Sing as Coordinating Minister for Public Services, with a specific mandate to improve the implementation of amenities for newer estates. Hospitals, schools, and parks can be built in a five-year term of government, but not rapid transit lines. Essentially, this means Minister Chan could be a key player in transport network development as well.
Space for our building
It also has practical consequences.
Almost everything west of the JRL alignment is currently an LTA construction site. Much of the Tengah Plantation and Garden districts to the east have already been filled up, whether by construction sites or that people actually live there now.
Perhaps this may have helped the situation somewhat, where the amount of land taken up by JRL construction means that it’s hard for HDB to ensure accessibility towards the west when there’s all the construction sites that need to be passed through. Furthermore, whilst construction can proceed faster when there’s no need to be a good neighbour and they can work whenever they want, that’s no longer the case in some parts. Disruptions were had in 2023 when they closed Plantation Crescent early to build the JRL.
In other parts of Tengah, it’s still possible to close roads, even if it may not be possible to work around the clock.
It also doesn’t help that Tengah Plantation and Tengah Park stations are part of JRL Stage 2, which will only open in 2028, despite the relatively advanced stage of the works in Tengah. It’s held back by the works around the Jurong East area, which is slowed by having to work with and around existing rail infrastructure.
That said, there’s also Brickland station. Announced in 2023, work was planned to start in 2024; it’s already mid-2025 and the LTA has not yet appointed a contractor to start work on the station. Arguably, there is a lot of work to be done especially when they’re taking the opportunity to modify the track layout around the station, and there’s still nine years until 2034. If anything, the station will serve future constituents of Transport Minister Jeffrey Siow’s Brickland ward, so perhaps some political oversight may already be there.
Put together, though, it’s not easy to see how these relatively poorer transport links have affected urban planning timelines. Instead of the mid-2000s pushing full steam ahead in Sengkang and Punggol regardless of transport system readiness, it seems that a pause has been taken on building housing in the Tengah area.
And they have opted now to focus development on places like Upper Changi, and Caldecott, where land was already being cleared and years do not need to be spent on environmental studies. Keppel Club gets an honorable mention, where the studies have already taken place.
Unlike Tengah, it helps that transport facilities are ready for these sites, which are all along relatively less busy stretches of the medium-capacity lines. People living near Caldecott can take the TEL to town; those in Keppel Club will use the relatively quiet CCL5, as well as CCL6. They won’t be fighting for space with people going from Serangoon to Buona Vista.
Safeguarding our future
But the greatest lesson Tengah can teach us is to safeguard our future.
In the early 2000s, there were already HDB documents showing a putative route for the JRL through Jurong West. Taking a very different route from the JRL we know today, these plans of yore would likely have connected the JRL branches at Corporation Road, near the old Jurong JC campus. Similarly, large reserves of land along Jalan Boon Lay may have been left for the JRL to run along, but eventually they were not used. For better or for worse, they squeezed the JRL down Jurong West Street 64 instead, with the accompanying compromises made.
That doesn’t mean this practice is bad. Safeguarding not only means leaving land behind, it also means imposing constraints on things now being built there in order to provide for things in future. It’s a double edged sword, like what happened at Newton station, which had to accommodate for the now-cancelled SURS, and we got a clunky virtual interchange out of it. That space can potentially be reused for more underpasses, or bridge supports for station expansion, but what matters is that it’s there.
It also means when it’s time to actually build the project, things can go a lot faster if there’s lesser preparation work like utilities relocation to be done. For one, with an alignment captured in the URA Long-Term Plan, we should expect the DTSS Phase 2 works to account for the potential alignment of CRL3 stations and tunnels, by not replacing utilities over these locations which then have to be moved, again, by the CRL3 project.
Likewise, excavations done by the TEL project at Woodlands North were not backfilled; the pit was left empty for if and when the RTS Link works would begin, drastically shortening the time to build the RTS Link terminal.
The same can happen in Tengah. Once there is a general idea of what the Tengah Line will look like, this can be shared in advance with the agencies developing Tengah, asking them to keep the land free. This is very important, because time is money, and it’s clear we have a crisis of how fast we can get projects done. Having space safeguarded to build the Tengah Line will allow it to be built faster and cheaper when it’s eventually done.
What can also help is to safeguard resources for rail expansion as well. Much like how in the recent Budget, the government put $5 billion in the Changi Airport Development Fund, they can do something similar for rail expansion. With a clear budget, I suspect the LTA can spend less time designing and more time building.
And if the LTA is also forced to invest into productivity improvements to make the most of a limited budget and build more rail for less, all the better. Even if initial phases only go as far as the CRL or Bukit Merah and not to the CBD, Tengah will need the rail capacity sooner than later.
Because ultimately, while the names and places may change, the fight for a better city lives on.
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