Travel Diaries: Singapore

The first stopover on my trip to Amsterdam was Singapore. I was pretty keen to break up the journey a bit, rather than just having one long direct flight, so that I could see some places along the way. I've wanted to visit Singapore for quite some time now - for one thing, I do love a good dense city, and for another I'm fascinated by the whole city-state thing and how that compares to more conventional city-and-hinterland states. (There's also a bunch of cultural and historical stuff I wanted to see, but let's focus on the urbanism for this blog).

The public transport has a reputation for being very good, and I would say it lives up to that reputation. After getting off the plane and going through customs, I could relatively easily find my way to the airport train station, buy an EZ-Link metro card, and jump onto a train - one departed while I was waiting in line for the metro card, but even at ~9.30pm on a Wednesday night, the services are frequent enough that I didn't have to wait long. The airport train does just run as a shuttle, so you have to change trains at Tanah Merah to get into the city centre - but it's a cross-platform change, so it's very easy.

Cross-platform interchange at Tanah Merah

The metro network is very comprehensive - pretty much anywhere you want to get to is accessible by train. This might seem obvious or easy for such a small place, but the reality is that Singapore has been working hard to develop this network over the last thirty years - and it's still ongoing. The North South Line was the first to be built, but it's been extended several times over the years (changing the shape into more of a horseshoe than a "north south" line) and even today, they're building a new infill station to serve the new Canberra property development. They're also building and planning several extensions to existing lines, and completely new lines, as we speak - ones which don't just serve new territory, but also have a lot of connections to existing lines. This connectivity is crucial for providing an actual network that allows trips to anywhere, from anywhere, making it possible to avoid owning a car - and it's something we've historically struggled with in Victoria, with our radial network centred on the CBD.

Current and future lines in Singapore (via Afori)

The trains themselves are modern and clean, and laid out very well for their intended purpose - with longitudinal seating along the edges, and plenty of standing room in the middles. The airport shuttles also had sections of completely-open space with no seating, presumably designed to provide more space for people with bulky luggage.

Plenty of space for bulky luggage on the airport trains

One thing I found quite delightful were the little LRT pods serving some outer areas. They're tiny little vehicles, so they're clearly not a high-capacity option, but they seem like a good way of adding coverage relatively cheaply, and feeding the high-capacity main metro line. They're also driverless, and you can sit up the front and look out the windscreen as though you're driving the train, which appeals to my inner five-year-old. Changi Airport has a similar setup for transferring between terminals, which works well too.

One of the LRT pods at Punggol (taken from the front of another one)

A lot of the stations in the downtown area are underground, and they tend to be very nice, clean, and airconditioned - which is pretty important in the tropical heat. Most of the stations further out are elevated, though, which means no aircon - but they to tend to get a decent breeze flowing through them, and have massive fans on the ceiling to provide a bit of relief. Accessibility seems quite good, with lifts from street level to the platforms at all the stations I visited (and I think the whole network), which was very helpful to me when lugging my massive suitcase around.

Interchange is quite a mixed bag - in some cases, like at Tanah Merah or Jurong East, it's best-practice cross-platform interchange, but in others it requires quite an extensive walk. At Serangoon, it's so far that they've installed an airport-style travelator for passengers switching between the Circle and North East Lines; but on the plus side, it is all within the paid area (and the aircon).

Cross-platform interchange at Jurong East. Note the half-height platform screen doors

Underground stations, like Changi Airport station, tend to have full-height platform screen doors, so basically the entire platform face is covered by a glass wall, and sliding doors just open up in line with the doors of the train behind it; elevated stations have half-height ones. These have a lot of safety benefits, and also help by showing you where to line up before the train arrives. The new stations in the Melbourne Metro 1 tunnel will have platform screen doors, but a wider rollout isn't on the cards at this stage.

Double-decker SG Bus (via Wikimedia Commons)

There also seems to be a pretty comprehensive bus network, including some lovely-looking lime green double-decker buses. I didn't have cause to use them though, I just stuck to the trains, so I can't comment too much on this.

Residential towers near Woodlands (via Slivester)

One of the striking things about Singapore is the density. Take a cruise around on the train, and there are just a huge amount of mid-rise residential towers everywhere you go. There seems to be a very successful model of building an MRT station, building a shopping centre and/or offices right next to it, surrounding it with residential towers, and feeding the whole thing with buses; and that model has been replicated throughout the city. This does lead to an architectural uniformity that makes it less visually appealing than it could be - but that is offset by the efforts to ensure a lot of greenery, whether at ground level or on the buildings themselves.

There are some inconsistencies with the signalised intersections

The walkability is a bit of a mixed bag. The excellent PT means that you rarely have to walk a long way, which helps a lot, but the physical and legal infrastructure for walking is less great. In the central parts of the city, many intersections don't require you to press a beg-button, which is good - but plenty still do require it. At some intersections, there will be beg buttons for all directions on the poles - but in one direction it's required and in the other it isn't (at least, at the times I was there - it might be different at 3am). You can see how this could lead to confusion.

Similarly, the pedestrian lights are sometimes accompanied by audible signals for the whole cycle, but sometimes just to warn you that the cycle is about to end (this seems to be tied to whether you needed to press the beg button or not). This is pretty problematic for me - I'm often looking around (or at my phone) rather than staring at the light, and I'm in the habit of being prompted by the sounds when crossing streets in Australia. It would no doubt be much worse for anyone with a visual impairment, who was wholly reliant on audible cues. Again, without any consistency, it's hard to rely on them.

Most retail areas have continuous covered walkways next to the shops

One aspect that I feel helps the walkability is the design of most frontages; there will generally be a section of footpath directly adjacent to the road, but the buildings also provide another section of covered walkway. This comes in very handy in the hot tropical sun, and would presumably be equally handy when it rains.

That said, there is a surprising lack of seating along the streets - indeed there seems to be a concerted effort to stop people from "loitering" or lingering in any way. Often where there's a fence or a ledge that could act as a seat, there'll be a sign banning sitting down.

This is another Accessibility issue - under the Australian DDA, street furniture like seats must be provided in areas of high pedestrian traffic - but it isn't something I'd necessarily notice all that readily in Australia. Walking around in a hot and humid environment like Singapore's, and needing to stop and rest periodically, I definitely noticed it - and I suppose this is yet another example of why properly implementing DDA standards benefits everybody, not just "disabled" people.

Overall, I loved Singapore - despite my natural aversion to the heat - and I think there's a hell of a lot that Melbourne could learn from how they do density and public transport.