PUBLISHED ONJune 08, 2025 8:21 AMBYBhavya RawatActing Minister for Transport and Senior Minister of State for Finance Jeffrey Siow has announced that Tengah and Brickland will have a total of eight new bus services within the next 18 months.
Speaking to media on Sunday (June 8), Siow stated that two of these bus routes will be in service by the end of this year.
Dr Choo Pei Ling, MP for Chua Chu Kang GRC, announced that bus service 872 will begin operating from Tengah Bus Interchange from Aug 10.
It will provide a direct link for Tengah residents to Chinese Garden MRT station while passing through areas in Bukit Batok, Plantation Crescent and Jurong East.
"We hope that residents like this National Day present from us," she said.
The second bus service, which is still in the works, will begin at Brickland and pass through two MRT stations, according to Siow, who added that further details will be released closer to the end of this year.
He also stated that the Land Transport Authority (LTA) will introduce two more express bus services in Tengah by the end of next year.
Both routes will start at the Brickland area, with one going towards the city and the other to one-north.
"These are designed to bring residents to their employment centres, to their jobs earlier, faster, more efficiently," he explained.
He added that four express feeder buses will also begin operating in the estate by the end of next year. They will connect Tengah to its four nearest MRT stations: Beauty World, Bukit Batok, Bukit Gombak and Jurong East.
Aside from these short-term developments, Siow highlighted that in the five-year period, residents can look forward to the completion of the Jurong Region Line and shuttle services within the estate.
Pointing out that a quarter of the new line's stations are located in Chua Chu Kang GRC, he said: "This will enable residents in our GRC to get onto the rail network very quickly and to be able to go to all parts of Singapore."
"I am quite confident that we will be able to deploy autonomous vehicles... running short shuttle services... to places like the community centre, food centres or transport nodes," he added.
Siow also spoke about the LTA and Ministry of Transport's plans to improve public transport options for new towns as a whole, stating that the difference in travel time between private and public transportation can be narrowed down for HDB estates "a little bit further" from the city.
"If we can try to do that a little bit better, improving the walkability of the town, improving the density of the bus network, we should be able to bring the journey times down and make public transport more competitive with private transport," he said.
Currently, it takes two to three times longer to travel from Tengah to the city by public transport as compared to private transport, said Siow, adding that he aims to cut the this down to one to two times longer.
"We will be doing that all across Singapore at the estates that are further away from the city, that is my priority," he said.
On Sunday morning, Siow, Adviser for Chua Chu Kang GRC Grassroots Organisations, attended the People’s Association (PA) Family Playground 2025 event at Tengah Community Club (CC), which was held in celebration of SG60.
Present alongside him were Chua Chu Kang GRC MPs Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim and Dr Choo, as well as MP for the Hong Kah North division of Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC Lee Hong Chuang.
In his opening speech, Siow assured Tengah residents that they can look forward to improvements to their estate in the near future.
Noting that many have voiced connectivity as one of the issues they face, Siow said: "I know that we are doing these things as residents are moving in, but it will become better very, very soon."
The Tengah Bus Interchange opened on July 21 last year. With it, a new service 871 was introduced to connect Tengah to Bukit Batok West, Bukit Gombak and Beauty World.
Existing bus services 992 and 870 were also extended to better serve Tengah residents.
Dr Choo, Zhulkarnain and Lee also addressed attendees — with the latter two speaking in Malay and Mandarin respectively.
They then interacted with families at the event booths, which comprised handicraft workshops as well as carnival games and food stands.
They were seen posing for pictures with children, young couples and elderly residents.
This event is one of five PA Family Playground programmes that will be held in various districts every weekend until July 5.
It also saw a new Singapore Book of Records entry for the largest art montage made of recycled materials, which was created by 120 families over four hours.
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