LTA awards S$1.15b worth of contracts for MRT expansion

SINGAPORE — The Land Transport Authority (LTA) has awarded contracts for the construction of three new stations located along the Thomson and Eastern Region Lines — including the communications system, signalling system and platform screen doors — to expand the rail network in Singapore.

The LTA said today (April 21) that civil, electrical and mechanical contracts worth up to S$1.15 billion were awarded to local and international construction companies, of which approximately S$207 million, S$441 million and S$222 million has been allotted to Mt Pleasant, Stevens and Maxwell stations respectively.

Mt Pleasant station will become the fifth Civil Defence shelter on the Thomson Line, alongside with Woodlands, Lentor, Mayflower and Sin Ming stations.

Among the 22 stations on Thomson Line, Stevens will serve as one of its six interchange stations — alongside with Woodlands, Caldecott, Orchard, Outram Park and Marina Bay — to connect Thomson and Bukit Timah.

The transport organisation also noted that these interchange stations will link to the North-South-East-West Line (NSEWL), Downtown Line (DTL), North East Line (NEL) and Circle Line (CCL), “providing greater accessibility and significantly improve travel time for commuters”.

Construction of the three stations will commence in the second quarter of this year and is slated for completion by 2021.

In order to support the concept of a fully automated, driverless train operation in Singapore, more than S$280 million has been set aside to develop and set up the communications and signalling systems, as well as the platform screen doors.

These systems will be commissioned and installed for the entire Thomson and Eastern Region Lines, which would be run together as one line, the LTA added.