Woodlands cemetery to make way for MRT depot

Straits Times 27 Feb 08;

NEARLY 2,000 graves in Woodlands will be exhumed to make way for a new MRT depot, the Land Transport Authority said yesterday.

The exhumation is scheduled to begin in October in the Kwong Hou Sua Teochew Cemetery, a little-known graveyard said to date back to the 1940s.

Part of the cemetery sits on a 21ha site earmarked for a depot, where trains for the upcoming Downtown Line will be serviced, repaired and parked.

The rail yard, to be located in Woodlands Road across from the Sungei Kadut Industrial Estate, will be twice the size of the Circle Line's Kim Chuan Depot, touted as the world's largest underground train depot. The Woodlands yard, however, will be built above ground.

Its construction will affect 1,957 graves at Kwong Hou Sua. The cemetery's remaining graves, estimated at between 2,500 and 3,000, will be dug up later to make room for a new industrial estate. A temple on the site will have to go as well.

The Singapore Land Authority said that the exact number of exhumed graves would be determined only at a later date.

Relatives can register at www.lta.gov.sg/ projects/kwonghousua/index.htm to claim the exhumed remains.

Construction on the new MRT depot will start in December this year. It is scheduled for completion in 2015, in time for the opening of the second stage of the Downtown Line.

The line is a $12 billion 33-station MRT project, which will be built in three stages. The first stage, which will serve the Marina Bay area, is expected to be up in 2013. The second, snaking up the Bukit Timah area and ending in Bukit Panjang, will be up in 2015. The final stage will head east to end at the Singapore Expo and is scheduled to be completed in 2016.

The line will intersect with other MRT lines, with interchange stations at Botanic Gardens, Newton, Little India, Bugis, Promenade, Bayfront, Chinatown and MacPherson.