Catchment Areas Study of the Thomson-East Coast MRT Line Stage 4

Summary of Project

The Thomson-East Coast Line, or TEL in short, is a major public infrastructure project that involves the significant use of public resources and funds to build. The TEL is designed to be completed and opened to the public in four stages: stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, and stage 4.

The purpose of this project is to analyse the catchment area of the train stations that are part of TEL Stage 4. There are seven train stations in total which are located in the eastern region of Singapore. We delineated the catchment area as 500m shortest path of each train station. Part of our analysis included examining the residential population that are within the respective catchment area.

Based on our analysis results, we discovered that some of these train stations have a relatively low population density. In other words, the number of potential commuters are relatively small.

In conclusion, we believe that some of these train stations may not be justified from a cost-benefit analysis point of view as there are relatively little demand for these stations. Moreover, there are existing public bus services that ply similar route to the TEL which commuters can utilize.