The Case for the Tampines LRT
Patching up a big hole in the east.
Tampines.
It’s often touted as one of the best places in Singapore to live in, and there might be some truth to that. Pedestrian and cycling infrastructure here is some of the best in the country, amenities are aplenty, and there’s convenient access to centers of employment (and Tampines is in fact a center of employment itself) and to the airport via the MRT.
Tampines is such a popular place for people to BTO in that an entire new district is rising up. Tampines North, centered around the future Tampines North Integrated Transport Hub, will be able to accomodate another 21,000 new homes.
The new district will be served by Tampines North station on the Cross Island Line, but it will not be contiguous with the Tampines station on the East West and Downtown Lines — that station is about 2 kilometers away as the crow flies. Buses will be the primary mode of getting to, fro, and between the two stations and therefore between the two town hubs.
Which raises some interesting questions. Is there enough bus capacity to accomodate everyone?
Even if there is, is it wise to continue to rely on buses? What about future growth? Are we missing out by just using buses?
Bus Capacity
There is most certainly enough bus capacity between Tampines North and Tampines Town Centre. Right now, anyway. That’s because the buses along the corridor are currently carrying air.
According to data from the LTA, ridership in and out of Tampines North Interchange every month comes out to just 3997 people (and this is including traffic from outside Tampines). Or about 130 people every day.
Which is just sad.
But let’s be clear, this is because Tampines North is currently a nothing. The CRL and Integrated Transport Hub aren’t ready yet, and neither are the majority of residential developments here. Furthermore, many of the existing developments are already well-served by bus services that originate at the more convenient Tampines Bus Interchange — none of the bus services that terminate at Tampines North do this.
We can expect ridership to soar once developments in the area are ready. Housing developments will lead to demand towards transit nodes, employment centres, and amenities in Tampines Town Centre. Likewise, there’ll also be commuters traveling from the rest of Tampines to get to the CRL.
The bus network may not be able to cope with that. Currently, 3 bus services operate between Tampines and Tampines North, at about a 20 minute frequency. That means hourly capacity is approximately 900. Which is not a lot compared to Tampines’ population.
So Why Rail? Why Trams?
Simply increasing the number of buses — Tampines already has a road-congesting amount of buses — isn’t the way to go.
Not least because the road layout here isn’t very efficient. It takes 20 minutes for a bus to travel from Tampines to Tampines North under off-peak conditions, and peak-hour congestion will only make that longer. Adding more buses won’t help this, especially since the LTA refuses to implement real bus priority.
Buses are also expensive to operate. While they’re cheaper to acquire and the associated infrastructure is less expensive to construct, buses require more drivers than trams — trams have higher capacity and they can be coupled together for even more capacity.
Drivers are expensive, and even more so today, as the bus sector continues to face a manpower shortage that will only drive manpower costs up. Buses are also less energy efficient; the higher friction of rubber tyres means more energy is needed to move off and get up to speed.
And today, with electric buses making their entry, we must also not ignore the environmental impact of lithium mining.
Shifting to EVs doesn’t reduce our carbon footprint and environmental impact, it just shifts it to some other country. In fact, it’s believed that battery vehicles are actually worse for the environment than internal combustion vehicles.
On the other hand, trams can be powered through overhead wires or electrified rails embedded in the ground. That means they don’t need lithium batteries and can be powered directly from the grid.
And as for why I’ve opted not to go for automated people movers like in Sengkang and Punggol, well, I’ve already written a whole piece about that.
(TL;DR, we should never have built those.)
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So if we do build a tram in Tampines, what would it look like?
The Tampines LRT
The Tampines LRT would link Tampines MRT station with Tampines North MRT station, but it will also serve areas south and west of Tampines station, supplementing the Downtown Line and serving amenities around Tampines West MRT station, including the Temasek Polytechnic. It will mix on-street operation with dedicated rights-of-way over a 5.40 km route. The line will utilize conventional tram rolling stock consisting of units of 4 segments that can be married to form longer 8-segment units.
The Tampines LRT will also provide additional network resilience in the event that any of the three MRT lines in Tampines suffer some service disruption. It’ll be an effective conduit for stranded commuters to get to alternative MRT lines, helping to avoid the usual situation of an overwhelming number of commuters trying to cram into rail replacement buses.
The route starts at an at-grade station adjacent to the current Tampines North Bus Interchange. From here, the line runs on Tampines Street 62 until it turns off into Tampines Boulevard Park. The line runs at-grade through the park until it reaches Tampines Ave 12, where it transitions into an elevated viaduct. While elevated, the line passes over Tampines Bus Interchange to a station adjacent to the East West Line station before transitioning back towards mixed traffic running, turning west and then south towards Tampines Street 12. The line follows Tampines Ave 2 and Tampines Ave 1, past Tampines Round Market, to reach Tampines West MRT station. From here, the route continues west before terminating at a station at the intersection with Tampines Ave 10.
Tram stops will be placed every 300 metres on average, with most major amenities having dedicated stops. A significant portion of the line runs in mixed traffic with other vehicles. Along these sections, to ensure reliable and timely operations, transit signal priority is put into place so that trams will always have the right-of-way at intersections.
Dedicated tram lanes will also be enforced along these sections to prevent incursions by other vehicles. These measures include physical barriers such as curbs, and may also include green track along the longest and widest sections of road.
Farther into the Future
As a tram system, the Tampines LRT can flexibly accommodate new routes and extensions. So, let’s explore these potential expansions.
One of the most obvious is a potential extension to Paya Lebar Air Base, complementing the Cross Island Line, and providing a more coherent route there from Tampines Central, Tampines East and Tampines West.
Paya Lebar Air Base will be a major source of demand for local connectivity. It encompasses a land area 5 times the size of Toa Payoh Town, and will house as many as 150,000 new homes.
The decommission of the airbase will also allow height limits in the area to be relaxed, enabling further densification of towns such as Sengkang, Tampines, and Hougang.
Paya Lebar Air Base is also envisioned to become the next regional hub for the east. Plans from the URA call for a new commercial node centered around a future station on the Cross Island Line.
The new town is also planned as a car-lite town, and it will boast numerous forms of hyperlocal and active mobility.
But one key flaw stands out — there’s no mass transit planned for these neighbourhoods. And this is where the trams come in. Trams blend in extremely well with streetscapes, and they are very much safe because they run on predictable, set paths.
The extension of the Tampines LRT to PLAB would enhance connectivity between the air base’s town centre and fringe areas to the east, as well as creating connectivity between the town centre and the surrounding neighbourhoods.
Of course, PLAB will likely need more than just one tram line — I’ve previously proposed one that would run along the runway, but that’s a topic for another time.
The Tampines LRT can also be expanded to further improve public transport quality in Tampines proper. This would come in the form of a second corridor, aligned along an east-west direction. This second route intersects the original at the junction of Tampines Ave 9 and Tampines Ave 12. It will run entirely in mixed traffic, but like the original route, will feature extensive right-of-way protections, such as transit signal priority, green track, and curb barriers.
This route originates at Tampines East MRT station, heading north, then east, to the junction between Tampines Ave 9 and Tampines Ave 10, near the UWCSEA campus.
Conclusion
The Tampines LRT will be a great high-capacity transport mode for Tampines, and it will greatly enhance the usability of public transport and the liveability of the town. It will also be a useful testbed for the tram technology, and if trams are successful here, we could see them being brought to other locales. Its ability to be flexibly expanded will also be valuable in matching transport supply with the rapid pace of urban development.
It will also bridge a significant gap in the railway network, and make Tampines a more integrated, more connected town.
