The 21km-long Downtown Line 3 (DTL3) will begin operations on Oct 21, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) announced on Wednesday (May 31).
DTL3 comprises these 16 stations: Fort Canning, Bencoolen, Jalan Besar, Bendeemer, Geylang Bahru, Mattar, MacPherson, Ubi, Kaki Bukit, Bedok North, Bedok Reservoir, Tampines West, Tampines, Tampines East, Upper Changi and Expo stations.
Of these 16 stations, three of them will be interchange stations that will link up to the Circle Line (CCL) and East-West Line (EWL). The MacPherson interchange station links the DTL3 to the CCL, while Tampines and Expo stations link to the EWL.
According to LTA, when DTL3 starts, we will be able to travel, for examples, from Tampines to Kaki Bukit in 10 minutes – less than half the 25 minutes by bus today.
By 2024, DTL3 will be extended by 2.2km to join the upcoming Thomson-East Coast Line.
With the additional 16 stations of DTL3, the overall DTL will have a distance of 42km, 34 stations and will be Singapore’s longest underground driverless train system.
The entire project started in 2007, when tenders for Downtown Line 1 was called.
The construction of DTL3 involved a number of challenges, the biggest of which was diverting the Singapore River – twice – to build tunnels linking Fort Canning and Bencoolen stations.
