All aboard: 11 new Thomson-East Coast MRT Line stations to open on Nov 13, free rides on Nov 11

A total of 11 stations in the third stage of the Thomson-East Coast MRT Line (TEL) stretching from Stevens to Gardens by the Bay will start ferrying paying passengers on Nov 13.

To celebrate the opening, all passengers will be able to ride the trains for free on Nov 11 between the new stations.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) on Friday (Oct 7) announced the opening date of the stations spanning 13.2km. The free rides are available from 10am to 9pm.

A series of activities will be held on Nov 11 to mark the stations' opening. The public can preview and familiarise themselves with the stations then, LTA said.

With the opening of the third stage, there will be two more stages of 10 stations stretching from Founders’ Memorial to Sungei Bedok left to be opened. These exclude Mount Pleasant and Marina South stations, which the Transport Ministry said will open only later when housing developments around them are ready.

All 32 TEL stations are expected to open by 2025. When fully open, the line is expected to be used by some 500,000 people daily, a number which will later increase to one million.

LTA on Friday said the opening of TEL will increase the resilience of Singapore's MRT lines by lessening the load on the North-South Line, which has segments running parallel to the TEL.

It also takes Singapore one step closer to its 2040 target of having nine in 10 trips to the city completed under 45 minutes, cutting journey time for more than 180,000 households by 40 per cent.

For instance, a person going from Bright Hill to Gardens by the Bay will take 40 minutes via TEL as compared with 65 minutes without it.

The 11 stations that are opening are Stevens, Napier, Orchard Boulevard, Orchard, Great World, Havelock, Outram Park, Maxwell, Shenton Way, Marina Bay and Gardens by the Bay.

They include four interchange stations. From the TEL, Stevens connects to the Downtown Line, Orchard station to the North-South Line, Outram Park to the East-West and North-East Lines, and Marina Bay to the Circle and North-South Lines.

Before this, nine TEL stations from Woodlands North to Caldecott were open in two stages in January 2020 and August 2021.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.