PM Lee said Downtown Line 2 took multiple Transport Ministers to complete. Audience laughed. He smiled too.

Hahahaha.

Belmont Lay| December 28, 05:40 PM

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was at the opening ceremony of the Downtown Line 2 held at the Botanic Gardens station on Saturday, Dec. 26, 2015.

In his opening address, PM Lee said travel time from Bukit Panjang to Bugis is expected to take 20 minutes less compared to previous methods

At the introduction of his speech, he brought on some guffaws with his self-awareness by mentioning the difficulties of building the 12 stations that run from Bukit Panjang to Rochor, and where the construction of the DTL has so far already outlasted the consecutive terms of a few transport ministers combined:

"Very happy to join all you, residents and commuters this morning, to officially open the 12 stations of Downtown Line 2 (DTL2). Every MRT line that we build takes a long time, and takes multiple terms of Government and multiple Transport Ministers to complete. (Audience laughs) Therefore, every time we have an opening ceremony we must remember previous Governments and previous Ministers."

You can watch this part of his speech in the first 40 seconds of this clip:

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The whole DTL was first mooted as the Bukit Timah Line by former Transport Minister Yeo Cheow Tong in 2001. It was studied further and evolved into the longer DTL, to link up Bukit Timah to the city and then to the East.

The ground-breaking was done six years later by then Minister Raymond Lim in 2007.

Former Minister Lui Tuck Yew saw to the final stages of construction. In 2013, PM Lee and Lui opened DTL1, also around the Christmas period.

And it was in 2013 when one of the major DTL contractors went bankrupt, with fears that the project would be considerably delayed.

Lui personally intervened, quickly brought in new contractors, took care of displaced workers and ensured that the construction programme carried on with minimum delay, with the success of the recovery process fully recovering the initial delay of six months.

Other issues encountered included workers and engineers having to overcome difficult terrain and cope with the complexities. For example, the tunnel at Bukit Timah goes through extremely hard granite, resulting in the tunnelling of one metre a day, instead of the usual eight to 10 metres, with some of the boulders to be cleared measuring the size of double decker buses.

At Rochor Station, the space for construction was limited and the fact that Rochor Canal was over it.

LTA had to divert the road more than 30 times over the last five years, with Rochor Canal itself having to temporarily give way to construction.

The DTL2 is officially opened to the public for free rides until the end of 2015.

 

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