Mobility in Singapore: A Brief History

Today, I was invited to give a talk to the Intelligent Transportation Society Singapore (ITS Singapore), a society uniting stakeholders from the public and private sectors with interests in transport and transport infrastructure.

For around 30 minutes, I shared about the history of mobility in Singapore over 200 years, in seven parts. Topics covered included the Raffles Town Plan, urban transformation over the last 50 years, the impact of modes of transport such as the rickshaw, motor car, and Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), and transport lessons to be learned from history. Much of the material was taken from my book, Jalan Singapura: 700 Years of Movement in Singapore.

That was followed by a flurry of questions from the floor, good questions that got me thinking about long-term transport visions for Singapore, and how we - both the authorities and the public - can achieve them together.

Thank you for having me, ITS Singapore!

(The photo on the slide is of a Keppel Bus Company Bedford bus, licence plate S7618, sometime in the late 1940s to early 1950s.)

Curtains on Peace Centre

Peace Centre and Peace Mansion at 1 Sophia Road recently made the news, because the multi-use complex was sold to a group of companies for $650 million - meaning it is on borrowed time.

The group comprises Chip Eng Seng, Sing-Haiyi Crystal, and Ultra Infinity. Earlier in May, the first two companies had also partnered with another company to purchase Maxwell House for $276.8 million.

This was Peace Centre and Mansion’s sixth attempt at a collective sale.

Peace Centre and Mansion were built sometime between 1972 and 1975, appearing in the 1975 street directory (below).

The 1970s saw the rise of multi-use complexes in the City, multi-storey buildings combining shops, offices, flats, and a carpark all in one high-rise building. Other multi-use complexes that came up during that period included Golden Mile Complex, People’s Park Complex, and Rochor Centre.

Peace Centre is a 10-storey front podium block with 232 commercial units, while Peace Mansion is the rear 32-storey tower block, with 86 apartments.

This is a view of Peace Centre and Mansion from Cathay Building in 1976. The complex is on the left.

Credit: Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Initially, Peace Centre and Mansion were the only complex along the stretch of Selegie Road between Prinsep Street and Sophia Road. It was subsequently joined by Parklane Shopping Mall and Paradiz Centre. At the end of Selegie Road, the Sikh temple known as Dharmak Diwan stood until it was demolished between 1993 and 1995.

Below is a map of the area in 1991.

Peace Centre and Mansion from the front, in 1993. Shophouses that stood opposite Selegie Road were in the process of being demolished; all that is left today is an open field.

Credit: Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

As for Paradiz Centre, it was revamped into PoMo around 2009, and again into ​​GR.iD earlier this year.

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I visited Peace Centre to take in the sights before the tenants move out, perhaps next year.

The facade had been upgraded since the previous photo was taken in 1993.

COVID-19 had murdered its nightlife industry, but colourful signs of sin remained.

Old-school tiles for the ground floor, replete with photocopying and print shops.

Single-file escalators, common in other old shopping centres.

The quadrangle as seen from the second floor, with exposed pillars.

Many units were empty. The shopping centre had seen better days.

Worn-out, utilitarian lifts.

There was a staircase to one side. It reminded me of the staircases of old libraries from my childhood...

On the escalator up to the third floor.

The third floor.

It was a weekday, so traffic in the mall was slow. The upper floors were almost deserted.

The side passages were narrow, with low ceilings.

The walkways connecting the front portion of Peace Centre to its back portion, as seen from Sophia Road. The road running below the walkways is Kirk Terrace. The lobby of Peace Mansion is further up Kirk Terrace, to the right. I did not approach the lobby because I did not want to attract the attention of its security.

Peace Mansion, as seen from ground level along Sophia Road.

Thanks to Google Maps, we have a view of Peace Centre and Mansion from above - there are tennis courts and a playground on the roof of the former for the residents of the latter.

Credit: Google Maps.

A visit to Peace Centre is not complete without buying a snack from “Singapore’s last kacang puteh seller”, 54-year-old Amirthaalangaram Moorthy. He’ll have to find a new roost once the shopping centre goes.

A little slice of Malaya in Spooner Road

A great place to tell a story of Singapore’s transport history is Spooner Road, a rather nondescript road branching off Kampong Bahru Road in two directions. Its story, spanning almost a hundred years, covers the coming and going of different modes of transport, and the arrival and departure of a little slice of Malaya.

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The railway came to Singapore as the Singapore-Kranji Railway in 1903, but a good part of the track was realigned by 1932. The new southern terminus of the railway, by then known as the Federated Malay States Railway (FMSR), was Singapore or Tanjong Pagar Station.

Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, 1932. Credit: Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

To accommodate the station and railway yards, an area of mostly open land between Kampong Bahru Road and Keppel Road in the south of the island, next to the Tanjong Pagar docks and wharves, was chosen.

Below is a map of the area in 1923, before the railway track was realigned. Much of the open land was known as “Western Reclamation”, perhaps because the area was once marshy, and had been reclaimed. On hillier ground stood the bungalows of Raeburn Park and Spottiswoode Park.

Credit: The National Archives (United Kingdom).

Below is a map of the area in 1934, after the railway pulled in.

Credit: Farish Ahmad Noor.

To create space for the railway yards and accommodation for railway staff, part of Kampong Bahru Road was realigned to the west; most of the original Kampong Bahru Road, now split in two segments by the railway track, was renamed Kampong Lama Road and Spooner Road (shaded blue) respectively.

“Kampong Lama” means “Old Village”, as compared to “Kampong Bahru” (“New Village”); Spooner Road was named after Charles Edwin Spooner, the first General Manager of the FMSR (below). This honour was posthumous - Spooner had died in 1909, aged 55.

To underscore the fact that the railway was Malayan, accommodation blocks north of the railway yards were named after Malayan sultanates - there were Perak Flats, Selangor Flats, Pahang Flats, Johore Flats, Kedah Flats, Kelantan Flats. There was also an FMSR Running House or Running Bungalow, a rest stop for train drivers.

Credit: Farish Ahmad Noor.

Below is a map of the area in 1970.

Credit: Survey Department, Singapore.

What’s intriguing about the map is that the location of the FMSR Running Bungalow had shifted to its present location, closer to the Kampong Bahru junction. Online articles state that the bungalow was built in the 1930s, but they omit this shift in location. As detailed maps of the area are difficult to come by, I am not sure when exactly the move took place. For now, looking at the 1934 and 1970 maps, I can conclude that the present FMSR Running Bungalow was erected sometime between these two years.

There’s more. A search of the newspaper archives reveals that other flats in the area were named after more Malayan states - there were the Negri Sembilan Flats and Perlis Flats.

A 1957 Straits Times article listing polling stations includes the Malayan names of Spooner Road flats. Credit: Singapore Press Holdings.

Today, just two blocks of flats stand in the area - Kemuning (“Orange Jasmine”) and Melati (“Jasmine”), or 1 and 2 Spooner Road. The footprints of these blocks are too close to the footprints of the Perak and Selangor Flats for all four buildings to have existed at the same time. Hence, I deduce that the Perak and Selangor Flats - and possibly the other flats named after Malayan states - were demolished to make way for the Kemuning and Melati blocks.

When did this urban redevelopment take place? The Perak Flats last appeared in the newspapers in 1964; the Selangor Flats, 1977. My guess is that sometime after 1977, the demolitions took place, followed by the construction of the Kemuning and Melati blocks. None of the blocks with Malayan state names has survived to the present.

In the late 1980s, a second major channel of transport arrived in the area - the Ayer Rajah Expressway, running westwards from East Coast Parkway. It was laid down parallel to the railway track, past Spooner Road and Kampong Lama Road. Not long after, the latter was expunged; the site is a carpark for Keppel Distripark today.

Ayer Rajah Expressway, 1986. Credit: Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Below is a map of the area in 1991. (It is a pity that street directories did not show railway buildings.)

Sometime between 1993 and 2007, Spooner Road was realigned into two branches. One branch served the Kemuning and Melati blocks; another served the railway yard.

Below is a map of the area in 2007.

The junction of Spooner Road (left) and Kampong Bahru Road (right) in 2008.

Credit: Google Maps.

Significant changes came to the area from 2011, after a 108-year era of rail in Singapore came to an end. The railway track from Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands closed for good; the rail operator, Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM), returned to Singapore the land on which the railway yard and surrounding buildings stood.

Once Singapore took back the land, it was only a matter of time before redevelopment happened. The track was removed; the yard and its buildings demolished.

The junction of Spooner Road (left) and Kampong Bahru Road (right) in 2013. On the left, the railway building has disappeared.

Credit: Google Maps.

Between 2016 and 2019, the stretch of Kampong Bahru Road in the area was widened from two lanes to four. Meanwhile, Spooner Road was extended to the east to serve another mode of transport - by 2019, Kampong Bahru Bus Terminal opened. Spooner Road was once named because of rail, but is now associated with buses.

Kampong Bahru Road in 2019. It has been widened, and the old junction with Spooner Road has shifted.

Credit: Google Maps.

What has stood the test of time - for now - are the Kemuning and Melati blocks.

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Entering Spooner Road, I passed a crumbling police post, with the sign “Polis” reminding me that it was built by the Malaysians, not Singaporeans.

The post originally guarded an entrance to the railway yard, but because of the realignment of Spooner Road, it now “guards” the way to the Kemuning and Melati blocks.

The post was in a sorry state, with rubbish strewn all over.

I initially thought the post was as old as the railway itself, but according to Google Street View, it was built very recently, sometime between 2008 and 2013. Nevertheless, I hope it can be conserved as part of Singapore’s railway heritage.

The Running Bungalow. Up to 2018, it was used as a Modern Montessori pre-school, but it presently lies empty.

The Kemuning and Melati blocks, painted a delicious kueh-like green and yellow. Currently, they are rental flats.

The Kemuning block - 1 Spooner Road.

The blocks, at least four decades old, have been deprived of the usual Housing & Development Board (HDB) upgrading, making them an urban time capsule: Old doors and grilles, window shutters, old lifts with no windows, laundry racks for the ground-floor units.

There is an open-air carpark between the two blocks (I was facing the Melati block here.)

The Melati block - 2 Spooner Road.

The Melati block as seen from Kampong Bahru Road.

The walkway from Kampong Bahru Road down to the Melati block - the blocks are on lower terrain than the road.

The ground-floor lift lobby of the Melati block.

The old lifts.

Like other old blocks, the common corridor faces out.

And like other old blocks, the lift lobbies are spacious.

The future facing the past - the Melati block offers a good view of the upcoming Avenue South Residence condominium project at 1 Silat Avenue, with two towering 56-storey blocks.

According to the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s 2019 Master Plan, the area is slated for housing, but “subject to detailed planning”.

Credit: Urban Redevelopment Authority.

The Spooner Road area is part of the future Greater Southern Waterfront. It is a short distance from Cantonment MRT Station, which will be integrated with the former Tanjong Pagar Railway Station by 2026. I can’t envision the area not being redeveloped in the future, which could entail the demolition of the Kemuning and Melati blocks, and further realignment of Spooner Road. But I hope some form of railway heritage can be retained.