Making way for a corridor

When the North-South Corridor - originally conceptualised as the North-South Expressway - is completed in 2026 as Singapore’s 11th expressway, it will greatly improve connectivity along the entire breadth of Singapore Island.

The 21-km, $8 billion corridor will connect the towns of Woodlands, Sembawang, Yishun, Ang Mo Kio, Bishan, and Toa Payoh to the Central Business District, relieving heavy traffic on the frequently-jammed Central Expressway.

Singapore’s costliest expressway yet will also be the first to contain dedicated bus and cycling lanes, a boon for the city-state’s attempts to go “car-lite”. The corridor can be a model for present and future expressways to better accommodate viable alternatives to cars.

However, in an increasingly crowded, built-up urban environment, planning and constructing such a corridor while minimising the impact on said environment is no mean feat.

Hence, it is unfortunate that a handful of property owners suddenly had their precious assets acquired, because of the corridor:

A four-storey building in Thomson Road will be demolished to allow excavation for an upcoming North-South Corridor tunnel just metres away to begin safely.

The authorities found that the building was not strong enough to withstand the work.

Consequently, the 57-year-old mixed-use building at 68 to 74 Thomson Road and the 776 sq m plot of freehold land it sits on were acquired by the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) for demolition.

Credit: The Straits Times.

The owners of its 12 residential units and four commercial units on the ground floor will have to return them to SLA by the end of July.

The building, which previously housed shops such as a Tanjong Rhu Pau outlet and the Animal Infirmary veterinary clinic, will be demolished by the end of this year.

Of its 16 units, 14 had been leased out to tenants.

The owners will be compensated based on the market value at the time of the acquisition.

SLA and the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said they will work closely with the owners and assist them through the acquisition process. The value of each unit may differ and the appraisal work will be outsourced to private valuers...

In a joint statement, SLA, LTA and the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) said the building’s foundation required strengthening, but its concrete was not strong enough to allow this...

68-74 Thomson Road was built in 1964. This was the four-storey building in 2009.

Credit: Google Maps.

The building in 2019:

Credit: Google Maps.

And last year, after construction works on the corridor had begun.

Credit: Google Maps.

Property in Singapore is worth its weight in gold, so I can imagine the affected property owners to be quite bitter about this. The knowledge that their properties will be making way for a billion-dollar infrastructural project that will improve nationwide connectivity on a grand scale will be cold comfort to them.

In recent times, the authorities are getting better at planning large-scale infrastructure projects such as MRT lines and expressways, such that as few people are personally affected as possible. But there will always be the few who are inconvenienced.

A reminder that when it comes to transport infrastructure, there is always a trade-off between the greater good and private interests.

New over old

In 2011, I visited the spot where the Mass Rapid Transit tracks between Buona Vista and Commonwealth MRT stations ran above the Keretapi Tanah Melayu railway tracks.

Ten years later, I returned to the same spot. The railway tracks are long gone, replaced by the Rail Corridor, but the greenery around it has largely survived. It’s still an ideal site to watch trains go by.

A halted history coming to a close

A forgotten road system that is almost 60 years old has been partially expunged.

The loop of Tanglin Halt Road and Tanglin Halt Close, named after a mode of transport that mostly disappeared from Singapore in 2011, has been reduced in area to make way for new developments.

Tanglin Halt Railway Station - briefly mentioned in my book, Jalan Singapura - opened in 1932, part of the railway line running from Tanjong Pagar in the south to Woodlands in the north, and then across the Causeway to Malaya.

The railway station was named “Halt” because trains stopped there; as for “Tanglin”, it was an oddity as it was nowhere near Tanglin or Tanglin Road. The nearest trunk road to the station was Buona Vista Road (later North and South Buona Vista Road).

A 1961 map showing Tanglin Halt Railway Station (shaded blue) and the surrounding area. Base picture credit: R W H Davies.

Over the next three decades, the station would close and open multiple times, a tussle between low passenger usage and the need for a stop to serve the surrounding area.

The sparsely-populated rural countryside around the station gradually receded by the early 1960s. Queenstown New Town, Singapore’s second satellite town after Toa Payoh, was expanded to the west, from the Alexandra Road area to the railway tracks.

The HDB estate of Tanglin Halt, and the roads of Tanglin Halt Road and Tanglin Halt Close, came up next to the station, and were named after it.

Tanglin Halt in 1963. The Tanglin Halt Road-Close loop is shaded blue.

Tanglin Halt Estate in the 1960s. Credit: My Queenstown.

The land around the loop formed by Tanglin Halt Road and Commonwealth Drive was filled with the HDB flats of Tanglin Halt Estate. As for the 20 acres of land around the triangular loop formed by Tanglin Halt Road and Tanglin Halt Close, it was taken up by Tanglin Halt Industrial Estate, managed by Jurong Town Corporation. There were 38 lots for cottage industries such as textiles, woodworks, electronics, and chocolate.

On the map, that made sense: The site was next to the HDB flats, which were a ready source of labour; it was also next to the railway station, which, though closed to passenger traffic then, could still be an option for the transport of raw materials and goods to and from Malaysia.

By 1966, Tanglin Halt Close was lined by low-rise factories and workshops.

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

There was a factory for Setron Limited, the first television assembly plant in Southeast Asia, which produced Singapore’s first locally-assembled black-and-white TV sets.

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

This was Lim Kah Ngam (Singapore) Limited, a woodworks factory.

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

There was also Daiwa Limited, a Japanese fishing equipment brand.

From the late 1980s, as Singapore’s manufacturing sector matured and larger industrial estates opened around the island, these companies began relocating from Tanglin Industrial Estate. The last newspaper advertisements for brands housed in the area petered out by the year 2000.

Tanglin Halt in 1988.

The roar of passing trains ceased in 2011, when the line between Tanjong Pagar and Woodlands closed for good, and the railway tracks were replaced by the Rail Corridor.

Sometime between 2000 and 2015, when I first visited the area, the buildings of Tanglin Halt Industrial Estate were torn down. All that’s left are an open field, and rusted fences and gates as the only evidence of the activities once held there.

And of course, there are the roads.

Tanglin Halt Road:

Tanglin Halt Close:

However, sometime between 2019 and 2020, the northern part of the original loop was shaved off.

The new northern part of the shrunken loop is clearly marked out by the fresh, white, recently-laid pavement.

Here, the original pavement has given way to the new pavement.

The new northern part of the loop, where a newly-laid section of Tanglin Halt Road gives way to a newly-laid section of Tanglin Halt Close:

Behind hoarding, an original stretch of Tanglin Halt Road has been expunged and covered with fresh grass.

The reason for the shaving of the loop could be this: What looks to be a new road overhanging the Rail Corridor, linking North Buona Vista Drive and the Biopolis complex to Commonwealth Avenue.

This aerial shot shows the recent changes to the Tanglin Halt Road-Close loop: What’s left of the original loop is shaded light blue, what’s expunged is shaded red, while new road is shaded dark blue.

Base picture credit: Google Maps.

The rest of the historic loop is on borrowed time. According to the 2019 URA Master Plan, the area is slated for redevelopment into a business park. The loop does not even appear on the Master Plan map.

Credit: Urban Redevelopment Authority.

Most of Tanglin Halt Estate itself is also slated for redevelopment very soon, under the Selective En-bloc Redevelopment Scheme. More of that in another post.