By Shibani Mahtani
SINGAPORE — Promotional brochures for this city showcase its skyline, its giant Ferris wheel and the glitzy Marina Bay Sands resort, complete with light shows.
But away from the crowds and noise is an unexpected sanctuary: a 26-kilometer, century-old defunct railway connecting Singapore to Malaysia, which environmental groups dream of turning into Singapore’s own version of New York’s High Line, the former elevated rail line that was converted into a trendy urban nature walk through Manhattan’s Meatpacking District and Chelsea neighborhoods.
Walks along the Singaporean track reveal a forgotten side of the city — including everything from 1970s-era pink and blue housing flats to old Hindu and Buddhist temples to rare patches of Singaporean graffiti — as well as long stretches of natural forest filled with birds and other fauna.
Walking along the railway “is good for the soul,” says Kwok Peng Leong, vice president of Nature Society Singapore, which has proposed preserving the lands as a “green corridor” in the midst of Singapore’s concrete canyons. “It gives you a feeling of being connected with nature, a feeling of peace and calm.”
The fate of Singapore’s green corridor, though, remains uncertain. Although Singapore’s government has agreed to preserve at least some of the area — which runs nearly the entire western length of the island — it hasn’t ruled out letting developers carve up some. That has left environmental groups mobilizing in the hopes of protecting the corridor before development swallows it up.
A final decision isn’t expected until the government reveals its next master plan in 2013, which means the next year will likely be one of close work between environmentalists and the government to save what they can — just like the New York High Line, which required a full-court press by activists to ensure it wasn’t scrapped in the name of progress.
The railways are a reminder of Singapore’s roots. The main stations, Tanjong Pagar and Bukit Timah, date back to the 1930s when trains moved goods between Singapore, Siam (now Thailand) and Malaya (now part of Malaysia). Planners envisioned Singapore then as a gateway to the rest of Asia, and its rails as part of a network that would eventually stretch to France, China and the Trans-Siberian railroad.
But the trains became less important over time, and in June, the last cars pulled out of the Tanjong Pagar station after Singapore shifted the transportation hub to Woodlands, an area near the causeway bridge linking Singapore to Malaysia’s coastal city of Johor Bahru.
According to a land-swap deal the Malaysian and Singaporean governments reached last year, Singapore now owns the railway land, which Malaysia used to control, while Malaysia received interests in valuable plots of Singaporean land. Singapore is now responsible for dismantling the tracks and returning them to Malaysia by the end of the year.
Today, only a 1.4-kilometer stretch of the track, extending south from Bukit Timah Railway Station, is officially open to the public, though the entire length was open temporarily earlier this year and some residents continue to sneak in to off-limits areas.
The easiest way to access the track is an entrance near the Bukit Timah station, which is hidden behind tall grass near a two-story McDonald’s. On the trail, crickets drown out the traffic, and bougainvillea shares space with lalang, or tall Malaysian weeds. Deeper in, doves, green pigeons and more than 100 other native birds can be found, along with more than 50 types of butterflies. The quiet is a jarring contrast to the busy roads and high-rise condominiums that lie just meters away, visible from the track.
“We live just 10 minutes away, so we come here and cycle every weekend,” said Mabel Lim. “There are very few places like this left, where there is lots of green space.”
The corridor has attracted substantial grass-roots support, with more than 7,000 people joining a Facebookpage, “We Support the Green Corridor in Singapore.” Local bloggers have posted photo essays of their jaunts, pointing out the flora, fauna and other sights along the railway.
The Nature Society and other groups, such as environmental consultancy Green Future Solutions, are pushing for it to be preserved as park and recreational space, possibly even a Unesco World Heritage Site, and have cited the High Line and Paris’s Promenade Plantee as examples of successful, tourist-attracting railway transformations. Green Future Solutions sees the corridor as a readymade nature corridor, recreational space and eco-friendly transportation network all into one.
Although Singapore’s government has agreed to preserve some of the corridor, the extent and specifics aren’t yet clear. It said it will conserve areas such as the Tanjong Pagar station, described as the “jewel in the crown” of the track by developers, and 400 meters of tracks nearby. In July, Khaw Boon Wan, Singapore’s minister of national development, said that any work would be done “in a way where we can still preserve this green spine.” In August, at this year’s National Day Rally address, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he and other officials were “very keen” on the green corridor.
Malaysia, too, sharing in the nostalgia, plans to turn the Johor Bahru railway station into a museum soon, and will showcase part of the track in museums across the country as a historical exhibit.
But real-estate developers may have other plans, and Singapore’s government has acknowledged the possibility of using some of the area for housing. Two-bedroom condos near Bukit Timah start at 1.5 million Singapore dollars (US$1.2 million), and there is likely to be “pressure to better maximize the land, even though it has a unique quality to it,” said Chua Yang Liang, head of Southeast Asia research at Jones Lang LaSalle.
Nature Society Singapore has been in talks with the government about the plans, and Mr. Leong said he expects those to continue for another six to 12 months. In addition, Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority has dedicated part of its website to receiving feedback on the corridor.
In a statement, it said it will consider “the possibility of maintaining a continuous green link along the rail corridor without affecting the development potential of the lands.” It added that it has planned a design competition for 2012 to solicit creative ideas for the space and met with designers during Singapore’s annual architecture festival earlier this month.
Ideas are already flowing in. One architecture student from the National University of Singapore proposed turning the corridor into an eco-friendly bicycle park, which would also feature a factory that produces carbon-fiber bicycles. Local media reports have indicated that the old Tanjong Pagar Railway Station could be turned into an events venue, or even a hotel.
Final plans for the corridor will be unveiled as part of Singapore’s draft masterplan in 2013.
The environmental lobby, for its part, isn’t wholly opposed to commercial development on the corridor. Its call for preservation “should not be viewed as a barrier to development,” Nature Society Singapore said in its proposal. “After all, the railway has been a symbol of progress in the past and should continue to be so.”
But those involved in the project hopeto see the entire corridor be preserved and developed as a whole, rather than split up into parts — the only way, they say, that the integrity of the rail corridor will be retained.
“The beauty of it is that it is a whole line,” said Ervine Lim, a landscape architecture student at the National University of Singapore, in a television interview. “To halve it, to cut it into pieces, that will kill part of the magic.”