新加坡西部交通大升级！45分钟内到市中心

Today, I would like to suggest two approaches to improve rail connectivity and bus services to relieve residents in the West from their dependence on the East-West Line so that we can be closer to realising the vision of a 45-minute city in the West.

The first approach is to improve rail connectivity for the West by connecting the JRL to the Circle Line and CRL. There have been two unconfirmed proposals regarding this.

The first proposal is to extend the JRL from Pandan Reservoir to Haw Par Villa on the Circle Line. This will allow residents in Tengah, Bukit Batok West, Ayer Rajah and West Coast to travel to the Downtown Core by MRT with just one transfer at Haw Par Villa. It could also benefit students travelling to and from the National University of Singapore. This proposal was first announced by then-Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew in 2015. Later, in 2022, then-Transport Minister S Iswaran updated that feasibility studies are still ongoing, even though this potential extension appears to have been dropped out of the Master Plan 2040.

The second proposal is to build an interchange infrastructure to connect Jurong Town Hall station on the JRL with Jurong Lake District station on the CRL. These two stations are within walking distance of each other but are not currently planned to be connected as an interchange. Then-Minister S Iswaran also said, in 2022, that the authorities would study this as, "We need to create meaningful connections in our MRT stations for convenience and resilience."

These two proposals to extend the JRL will greatly increase rail connectivity from the West to the Downtown Core and the rest of Singapore. We are glad that, this morning, Minister Chee Hong Tat has mentioned that the Ministry of Transport will look into these proposals.

The second approach to improve public transport in the West is to introduce a network of inter-town skip-stop bus services. This can be implemented relatively quickly, compared to increasing rail connectivity. These skip-stop services would be different from existing express bus services. They will only stop at a few high demand stops in each town throughout the entire route to allow commuters to connect between towns more quickly. They will also run all-day, in both directions, at good frequency. The existing routes that stop at all stops can be still retained to feed commuters from the lesser-demand stops to the high-demand stops.

Two types of skip-stop bus services should be introduced. The first type is the long-distance skip-stop bus services that connect different towns in Singapore. In the West, we currently have services 30 and 143, which provide important inter-town connections for residents of Teban Gardens, Pandan Gardens and West Coast, which are areas currently not served by MRT to the East and Central Singapore. There are also services, such as 180 and 974, which link Bukit Panjang with Boon Lay and Jurong West.

未完待续,请点击[下一页]继续阅读