The two bodies leading the delivery of a new high-speed railway between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore are preparing to issue a tender for a Joint Development Partner for the project.
Malaysia’s MyHSR Corporation and Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) will issue a joint tender on August 22 in search of a project partner to provide “project management support, technical advice and procurement advice” on the cross-border railway.
Bids are being requested from companies with a track record of advising large public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects and comparable high-speed rail projects.
The aim of the scheme is to reduce journey times between the two cities to just 90 minutes. The route will include eight stations, connecting six cities in Malaysia and Singapore.
For a city state like Singapore with land shortage and small
in size with distance from state border to CBD not more than 20 km it is really
not advisable to have a high-speed train line unless it is done with the
purpose of future extension to Indonesian via Batam Island. This is same case with Hong Kong. From the start Hong Kong should not have
proceeded to build the costly line of 20km or so. The high-speed rail should be
terminated at the border at Shenzhen.
The traveling time for the passengers going to CBD in both cases will be
almost the same whether the high-speed stops at the border or the CBD.
For Singapore it is more practical and pragmatic to
contribute some construction cost for Malaysia to build the terminal beside or
underneath the Johore Bahru immigration and customs check point. The passengers
coming to Singapore can then take a special transport from there It could be much faster and cheaper for the
passengers to arrive at Singapore CBD,
not to say of those heading to suburbs around the city.