When chickens come home to roost
This came up in a conversation with someone else over why the cancellation of Service 700 was taken so badly.
It started with why people didn’t want to alight at the Dunearn Road bus stop and then walk over to the MRT station, but would gladly wait for a bus that would take them around Newton Circus (and hence the 972 reroute). It’s not a transportation issue directly, but it is an urban planning problem.
It’s interesting to go back and reread what I wrote about the issue of Newton back in July 2017. Little did I know, that six weeks after writing that post (and three years before this one), LTA would officially de-safeguard the SURS network, removing the constraint that had been imposed on the architects designing the DTL Newton station.
I don’t recall talking about it when the news came out, but three years late is better than never. Alas, what’s built is built. Things are what they are. Young, angry, edgy me from donkey years ago was proven right. Bukit Panjang residents wanting the Orchard area have already given the DTL a wide berth and now throw stink bombs when LTA wants to “force” them onto the DTL. But could we have a way to fix the situation?
Right back at ya, Mr. Newton
As we can see in the map provided by the LTA, the Newton Circus area was to be a massive interchange between all the trunk roads in the area and the SURS.
Apart from the main SURS route itself cutting through the south part of Newton station and the roundabout area, the area beneath Newton Circus would also have been home to several slip roads to facilitate access to the SURS from surrounding trunk roads, which would significantly complicate underground access to the station if it was any closer to Newton Circus.
They could have just put the DTL platforms under Newton Circus anyway, but it would have to be so deep you’re practically coming out of the ninth circle of hell — although the Toei Oedo Line does this. Then there was the factor of providing reasonable emergency exits as well as ventilation facilities to the DTL before talking about signalling equipment rooms and power substations. Furthermore, given the issues with Exit A (explained later) and Civil Defense structural requirements, you’d still have the janky transfer to put up with.
All that would have pushed up construction costs, as evidenced by Toei’s significant financial problems from building the Oedo Line. On our part, our costs are already high enough; we don’t need it to go any higher especially once you factor in the NIMBYs who want to keep their direct bus services and not take the MRT, which impacts the line’s ability to repay its capital costs, and that there’s not much you could realistically gain for the added cost.
So whatever we have today is not great, but with the SURS land freed up we can always consider how to reuse that space, much like how the TEL Project is cleaning up the Outram Park area.
What can we do?
It could be possible to build a new underpass beneath Newton Circus at where the SURS would have been. This underpass can be connected both to the DTL Exit C concourse, as well as the NSL station near Exit B. A replacement Exit A can then be built, connecting to this underpass instead, and allowing the faregates at the current unpaid linkway to be removed. This would then create a fully integrated Newton station.
Constructing such a network of underpasses would also solve a few more issues with the Newton area. Firstly, an underpass connecting to bus stop 40049 Opp Newton Stn means that there wouldn’t be a need to send a bus from Dunearn Road to Scotts Road, since you can just take any bus along Dunearn, alight at that stop, then walk along the air conditioned underpass over to the MRT.
Second, it avoids the initial issue behind the lack of a paid link; that Exit A cannot be substantially modified because the station concourse also functions as a pedestrian crossing across Scotts Road. Forget shutting down, that means it wouldn’t be possible to simply move the faregates to street level. But since the original transfer concept called for a paid link below Exit A, the exit would have to be shut down anyway to install a new Civil Defense blast door to cover up the hole cut in the station box — remember that Newton NSL is a Civil Defense shelter too. If you look up construction photographs of the TEL Woodlands station, the blast doors have to be in place before the rest of the surrounding works can be completed.
Thirdly, not having two separate sets of faregates and thus a contiguous paid area between both lines frees up space for additional vertical circulation, such as escalators, within the NSL station. The access to the NSL platforms still has the same configuration as it did in 1987 when the station opened, unlike other stations that received upgrades when they were “promoted” to interchange stations to allow for busier human traffic. Even while only *some* passengers choose to use Newton to change trains, the station experiences considerable amounts of congestion in peak hours. Adding additional vertical circulation will be necessary if the rest of the changes made reduces the stigma of changing trains here.
Fourthly (though this doesn’t mean much, I guess), by providing more convenient rail access to more areas in the Newton Circus vicinity, it can make travelling by MRT feel more desirable. The general rule is that 400m is the acceptable walking distance to a train station, which we adopt with the new walking radius circles on the TEL Locality Maps. However, Newton Circus presents a massive obstacle that makes this 400m goal difficult to fulfill, as a lack of good pedestrian access to the other side of Bukit Timah/Dunearn Road artificially decreases the walkshed of the station. Providing such an underpass would make the 400m walk more bearable and perhaps less annoying as well. Furthermore, with plenty of empty land around the station (presumably SURS related as well?), such pedestrian links may make the area more attractive to property developers.
In particular, this is what I’m thinking:
For the most part, this can be built with cut and cover excavation, perhaps with some pipe jacking to avoid having to shut down major roads during construction. The section across the Rochor Canal can also be done with the RTBM like what was done at Stevens. If there’s extra money, the underpass can even be extended to Newton Food Centre to replace the existing overhead bridge.
Land acquisition at the condo along Dunearn Road may be the hard part, but presumably with the SURS safeguarding they would have not used the land required for such an underpass.
No harm trying, though, and it would actually be in line with what they’re doing at new stations too.
EDIT: It appears that according to this blog, the NSL station would have been placed under Newton Circus and not where it is now, but that didn’t happen due to “technical issues”. Well, that was in 1982, and obviously things must have changed if they dared to produce a design calling for the SURS to be built beneath Newton Circus.
