Looking forward to going to Singapore by bullet train

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The idea of having a high-speed rail (HSR) linking Kuala Lumpur and Singapore has been around since the middle of 1990s but it’s only now that the green light for this massive project is finally given.

It’s good to hear that both Malaysia and Singapore are joining hands in making this a reality.

After all, cutting travel time by car of about four to five hours to just over 90 minutes of journey in a bullet train is something that I personally look forward to. Just imagine, one can just hop on a train without having the hassle to drive or head to the airport in order to get to Singapore and back.

And the most important thing is one will immediately arrive at the city centre via train as opposed to taking a flight where airports are usually located quite a distance from the city.

Most of my friends, especially the ones that have relatives in the Lion City or hometown situated in the south of Malaysia, welcome the idea with open arms.

For those who had the luxury to travel to Japan, Taiwan and the UK, the bullet train networks in those countries seem to benefit the community and economy at large by taking a lot of vehicles off the roads, creating new townships and spurring new businesses in the realms of these new townships.

Lille in northern France has been transformed from a town with a high unemployment rate into a high speed rail crossroad.

It is now the third largest economic centre in France, since the introduction of the service in the 1990s.

HSR services, poineered in Japan in the 1960s, gained prominence in Asia after South Korea, Taiwan and China introduced the service in the last decade or so.

The details of the projects, assumed to be in billions, are still quite sketchy, apart from it being under public-private partnership with strong government participation. Although our pace in establishing the high-speed rail network is a bit behind when compared with of our more developed Asian counterparts, let’s look at the bright side. There are a lot of successful business models for us to replicate and pitfalls to avoid.

This is vital in order to make the project not only a social success but a commercial achievement too.

For example, the Taipei-Kaohsiung HSR, a 345km line with six intermediate stops, carried over 30 million passengers in 2011 and has been generating an operating profit since 2009, its third year of operation.

Thus, let us hope that by 2020, we will be on our way to Singapore on our own bullet train.

Looking forward to going to Singapore by bullet train