Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Travel by BMW

Singaporeans travel by BMW using “bus, MRT, walk”. To promote, the Government plans to:

a) Build more MRT lines over the nexlt 15 years in Singapore.
b) Introduce more feeder services

I wish to suggest a further leg to this strategy:

c) Make it practical for people to walk to and from the MRT station.

My proposal is:

d) Build elevated, shaded walkways from MRT stations to cover a distance of approximately 1 km to reach different neighbourhoods.

e) Make it possible for people to climb once and use the walkway to reach the MRT station, crossing many roads.

f) It will be comfortable to walk on the elevated walkway as it is shaded from the sun and rain.

g) This will also encourage people to walk to the nearby town center, market, school or bus terminus.

In Taipei, there is an elevated walkway (the local called it the Skywalk) that crosses many roads in the Taipei City Government disrict. It is well used.

It may be costly to build the elevated walkways, but if can be considered as being part of the total cost of the MRT line. The incremental cost of the walkway is probably less than 5%. It can be justified, if it encourages more people living in the nearby areas to use the MRT system.

Perhaps, a pilot project can be done to build this elevated walkway in one town, e.g. Ang Mo Kio, to test its feasibility? If successful, it can be implemented in the other towns.

1 comment:

  1. Bangkok also has a skywalk under the BTS track that links several major shopping centres together. Part of it goes past the Hyatt hotel and you can sometimes catch dancers dancing in front of the Erawan shrine.

    It was a great alternative to walking on the pavement and allows you to have a cool walk to your next destination (exercise away the fats from overeating!)

    http://chlim01.blogspot.com/2007/07/bangkok-skywalk.html

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