LTA awards S$1.99b contract to build world's first four-in-one depot

SINGAPORE's Land Transport Authority (LTA) has awarded a S$1.99 billion civil contract to build the East Coast Integrated Depot - the world's first four-in-one rail and bus depot - and its reception tunnels to South Korea-based GS Engineering & Construction Corp.

The East Coast Integrated Depot will be the first in the world to integrate three train depots and one bus depot within a single site of 36 hectares, said LTA in a statement.

For this four-in-one depot, LTA will stack the train depots for the East-West Line (EWL), Downtown Line (DTL) and Thomson-East Coast Line (TEL) with a bus depot located next to them.

The integrated depot will be able to house around 220 trains and 550 buses.

LTA said this land integration would save 44 hectares of land, or an area of approximately 60 football fields, for Singapore.

LTA also awarded three other civil contracts worth S$1.31 billion for the construction of Siglap and Bayshore stations along TEL and Xilin station along Downtown Line 3 Extension (DTL3e).

The S$176 million job to construct Siglap station was awarded to subsidiaries of China Communication Construction Company John Holland Pty Ltd - an established contractor in Australia which was recently acquired by CCC International Holding Ltd - and Zhen Hua (Singapore) Engineering Pte Ltd - a contractor with overseas transit experience mainly in China, with ongoing projects in Beijing.

The construction of Bayshore station and its associated tunnels has been awarded to the Woh Hup (Private) Ltd-Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co (Singapore) Pte Ltd joint venture at a contract sum of S$296 million, while the S$834 million job to build Xilin station and its associated tunnels, as well as reception tunnels to the depot, has been awarded to South Korea's Samsung C&T Corp.

Construction works for these four civil contracts are expected to start by the second quarter of 2016. Siglap and Bayshore stations are targeted for completion in 2023, while Xilin station and East Coast Integrated Depot are targeted for completion in 2024.