The Lights Are Green All the Way for Singapore’s Rapid Rail System

SINGAPORE —  Some of the gentlemen at the Cricket Club, surveying the pitch over pink gins, insist that the drainage hasn’t been right since the tunnel borer passed by. Taxi drivers worry about the competition.

But that’s just a ripple of dissent in the wave of initial enthusiasm for Singapore’s new rapid transit rail system, which began operating last November. The key downtown link was opened a little later, and the people of Singapore are sold on the system’s speed.

“It used to take me an hour to get in by bus,” said a clerk at a hotel near the heart of the city. “Now, by subway, I’m just 15 minutes from home. It costs a little more, but it’s worth it.”

Materially and technologically, as usual, everything’s up to date in Singapore. There’s nothing like a new car, for instance, and the Mass Rapid Transit Corp. (MRT) has 396 of them on hand or on order--sleek, open, brushed-aluminum beauties with color-coordinated interiors and space for 300 passengers each, 62 seated.

They may have arrived just in time. At gleaming MRT stations, escalators lift workers and shoppers onto downtown streets so clogged with traffic that the government tries to discourage drivers with stiff taxation and rush-hour restrictions.

370,000 Passengers a Day

This year the transit system is expected to provide a measure of relief by transporting about 370,000 passengers a day. By 1990, when the 42-mile system is scheduled to be completed, under budget and two years ahead of schedule, the passenger figure will more than double. According to transit company statistics, more than half of Singapore’s 2.6 million people live within six-tenths of a mile of an MRT route.

For L. Dennis Ballou, a down-home Georgian who became project director here after filling the same post in the construction of the Atlanta subway, the MRT technology is impressive.

In an interview, he noted several times that some Singapore advances will be beyond the reach, in his opinion, of the builders of Los Angeles’ Metro Rail. He mentioned a passenger information system here--data is fed to a central computer from magnetically marked cards that passengers use to activate turnstiles--and remarked, “L.A. probably can’t afford that one.”

For Ballou it’s not so much the technology that makes the MRT impressive as the commitment of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s government to the project, budgeted at the equivalent of $2.6 billion in 1982, two years before construction began.

“This government is fiscally responsible,” he said in admiration. “The money’s there. It’s in the bank. . . . You can go like blue blazes if you have the money.”

For Ballou, time is money and delays are financial dynamite.

“Build it quickly and you can build it cheaply,” he said. “That’s ‘Ballou’s First Principle of Construction.’ ”

He added that his principle applies only if first-rate testing and quality control are insisted on from the day the job begins, and he noted that the work in Singapore was greatly aided by importing a corps of engineers and tunnel experts who had worked on the Hong Kong subway.

Singapore’s system, almost a third underground, is the 10th in Asia. Japan alone has five such systems, and there are others in Beijing, Calcutta and Seoul, South Korea.

The Singapore system is expected to spin off both economic and social benefits. The routes--roughly an inverted T with a north-south line crossed at Raffles Place in the central city by lines pushing east and west--will service outlying industrial and housing areas.

Already office buildings and apartment blocks near the stations report increased occupancy rates. According to a survey by the Singapore Straits Times newspaper, rents in some buildings have increased 10% to 15%. Ballou himself polled the manager of a Burger King outlet beside the station on trendy Orchard Road and was told that “business (is) up 40%.”

Meanwhile, residents of the “new towns” that Lee’s government is building in the rural areas of the small island-nation find that downtown excitement is just 50 cents away on the MRT, easily affordable for Singapore’s well-paid young workers.

“To shop for clothes or see a movie, you have to go into the city,” said Yazid Siraj, a 24-year-old machinist, as he and his girlfriend left a train at the Yio Chu Kang station, the northern terminus of the system. “The MRT is a good idea. It’s going to bring people closer together.”

The Singaporean government, which under Lee is constantly planning for the future, first raised the idea of a rapid transit system in the early 1970s. The country’s limited space--240 square miles--gives a premium to downtown land. More roads, bridges and parking lots, the government concluded, was a losing long-term policy.

From 1972 to 1980, planners evaluated, revised and rejected possibilities. A team of Harvard University experts was brought in and suggested an all-bus network. The American idea was discarded, and in 1982, Lee’s government gave the go-ahead to the rail system. Ground was broken the next year, and orderly Singapore began to undergo one of the more disruptive of public projects, the construction of a subway.

Building on the experience of recent transit jobs, including his own work in Atlanta, Ballou and his men began a three-pronged construction effort:

-- The majority of the system would be carried above-ground on cement viaducts, particularly in areas outside the central city. To cause as little disturbance as possible to surrounding streets, the viaducts moved forward in a direct line. The beams on which the track would be laid were cast on the right of way itself, then lifted and moved forward from pier to pier by an ingenious gantry.

-- In less congested urban areas, the subway route was built with the cut-and-cover method--dig a trench, lay in a rectangular tunnel from above, then cover it.

-- The most difficult method, tunnel boring, was used in the most highly developed areas downtown. A huge machine called a tunnel shield, nearly 20 feet in diameter on the face, bores through the earth. Air conditions and underground water must be watched closely. The effect on the surface soil can never be perfectly predicted.

Construction of the stations--there will be 42 on the completed system--is also a major job.

Gated Walls on Platforms

A striking touch in the underground stations are the stainless-steel gated walls that separate the platforms from the tracks. The idea was to prevent loss of cool air from the air-conditioned stations into the train tunnels, but the walls also have the benefit of preventing waiting passengers from falling onto the tracks. The MRT is an electrified-rail system with a “hot” third rail.

The cars themselves, built by a Japanese combine led by Kawasaki--the system uses a variety of imported subsystems--have a unique feature: no doors at either end. Trains normally consist of six cars, and a passenger can see from one end to the other if the train is not on a curve. The expanded vision is expected to improve security and access to seating.

The system also has a fail-safe method of train control, Ballou said, and safety has been given priority regardless of cost. The trains can travel at a maximum speed of 48 m.p.h. but will operate at an average of 25 m.p.h.

The system has almost everything but not quite enough in the view of some Singaporeans. For instance, it permits no food or drink or smoking. In squeaky clean Singapore, Prime Minister Lee is not about to let his countrymen do below ground what they are discouraged from doing above: litter or risk their health.