Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Pre-construction - Jurong East

Jurong East station is a transport hub which currently serves as an interchange station between the North South Line (NSL) and East West Line (EWL). A major bus interchange is located next to the MRT station, servicing approximately 20 bus routes. The original bus interchange was located on the northwestern side of the plot, but was moved to a temporary facility west of the station in 2011.

17 October 2017
Source: Google Earth

The Jurong Region Line (JRL) station will be parallel to the existing train station, to provide a seamless transfer between the EWL, NSL and JRL. As this site is currently occupied by the temporary bus interchange, a replacement temporary bus interchange is being built next to the JCube shopping mall under contract DE108.

30 September 2018 - Construction of a new temporary bus interchange next to Jcube mall can be seen.
Source: Google Earth
We visited the current temporary bus interchange and captured some snippets of everyday life during the evening peak hours as commuters went about their daily routines.

26 February 2019 - A view inside the first Jurong East temporary bus interchange.
Credit: Deskoh

Numerous shops line the alighting and boarding berths at the bus interchange, providing food and services to the brisk commuter traffic using the train and bus systems. Some commuters stopped to make purchases while others dashed after buses or hurried along to join the other waiting commuters.

26 February 2019 - A queue for the Causeway Link cross-border bus service to Malaysia.
Credit: Deskoh

Queues formed quickly along the respective boarding berths for the bus services. Especially long queues can be observed in the waiting lines for the Causeway Link cross-border services to various locations in Johor, Malaysia.

26 February 2019 - Public buses, sporting a standardised Lush Green livery, at boarding berths with the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station in the background.
Credit: Deskoh
Dusk slowly wore on as the sun set, bringing out the colours of the night, adding vibrant hues to this bustling western town centre that is the largest outside of the Central Business District. Bright, lush green buses of various capacities and makes pull up to the boarding berths, clearing the lines of waiting commuters eager to get home after a long day at work. Several hours pass with more of the same - long queues, rushing commuters and stall holders hawking their goods, but eventually night falls and the pace slows some.

26 February 2019 - A view of Jurong East Town Centre at night.
Credit: Deskoh
Just as the pace of life at the transport hub changes through the day, residents of the Housing & Development Board (HDB) flats along Jurong East Central have been witness to the changing landscape and skyline of Jurong East town centre. The original station and bus interchange once stood proudly as the sole structures in the middle of a large expanse of greenery.

Undated image of the original MRT station.
Source: JDC Corporation

28 January 2010 - A view of the expanded Jurong East MRT interchange and original Jurong East bus interchange from a HDB flat along Jurong East Central. This view is no longer possible due to development of the surrounding area.

27 February 2019
Credit: Deskoh
Today, the area is home to four shopping malls (Jem, Westgate, JCube, IMM, and the now defunct Big Box), several office developments (Jem, Westgate, JTC Summit & Vision Exchange towers), and a condominium (J Gateway), among various other amenities. All these structures have come up as tall, big and busy, or a combination of these.

An artist's render of the Integrated Transport Hub mixed-use development at Jurong East.
Source: MIPIM/The Architectural Review
The last expanse of greenery fronting the station will become the site of an upcoming mixed use development and a park. Even the land around the periphery of the current developments is set to welcome more office spaces as part of the Jurong Gateway development, with the transport hub right at the centre of it all.

27 February 2019
Credit: Deskoh
What started out as a simple flying junction of viaducts for the original NSL and EWL has morphed into a tangled spaghetti mess with viaducts criss-crossing over one another on the northwestern side of the station. More viaducts will be built for the JRL in the near future, likely crossing over the EWL tracks then running alongside the NSL tracks further north towards Toh Guan station, adding to the complicated weaving of concrete structures at this busy junction.

27 February 2019
Credit: Deskoh
Residents and visitors to Jurong East alike can look forward to even more changes in the Jurong skyline come 2027, when the JRL station and more of the surrounding developments are expected to complete.

2 comments:

  1. Do we have any information on what the JRL Jurong East station will look like? Land Transport Guru claims that it will be a stacked platform, while the Draft Masterplan shows it being a side platform...

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  2. Eh, can don't use filters? The filtered photos are very hard to see. Especially since these photos are meant for memory sake. It's better to keep them unfiltered, so that in future, we would know how the place actually looked like in 2019. Again, the filtered photos are very uncomfortable for the eye to see. I really suggest that you replace the photos with unfiltered ones. Thank you.

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