PETALING JAYA – The days of spending hours in a crawl along the Johor-Singapore Causeway and long queues at Customs and Immigration counters to get into Singapore are numbered.
A new 4.2km Johor Baru-Singapore Rapid Transit System Link (RTS Link) will see easy movement of people from one city to another.
The link will have co-located Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) and provide seamless connectivity between Bukit Chagar station in Johor Baru and the Woodlands North station Singapore.
Malaysia and Singapore yesterday signed the Johor Baru-Singapore Rapid Transit System agreement, the second cross-border rail agreement between the two countries in two years.
The signing of the agreement was witnessed by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong after the eighth leaders’ retreat here.
Malaysia was represented by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Rahman Dahlan and Singapore by its Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure and Minister of Transport Khaw Boon Wan.
“We have looked at how Customs and Immigration clearing is done for rail services between Britain and France,” Land Public Transport Commission’s chief executive officer Mohd Azharuddin Mat Shah said during a briefing on the proposed project.
He said the RTS Link was necessary to ease congestion along the present 1.056m causeway.
“The causeway is heavily congested with the number of vehicles rising.
“The matter is compounded as KTMB rail service can only ferry about 320 passengers an hour or 6,000 passengers a day to Singapore,” he said.
The RTS Link will be able to transport some 10,000 passengers an hour or 72,000 passengers a day in four coaches travelling at 70kph.
Lee said the link, when completed in 2024, will benefit thousands of daily commuters and reduce Causeway congestion.
Najib took note that congestion at the Causeway peaked especially during festivities and school holidays.
The RTS Link stations will also be well integrated with the local public transport networks in each country.
Mohd Azharuddin noted that the RTS Link would run above ground while in Johor and on a 25m-high bridge track across the straits before travelling underground to Woodlands North in Singapore.
“Commuters will spend about 30 minutes to travel and clear customs and immigration,” he said.
“This will save a lot of time compared to currently spending one or two hours stuck along the Causeway and Immigration,” he added.
Based on a study done by SPAD in 2016, an average of 4,000 buses, 52,000 cars and 72,000 motorcycles spend at least an hour to get across the causeway.
He said the KTMB rail service will be discontinued six months after the RTS Link becomes operational in Dec 2024.
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