PM Lee Hsien Loong at the Groundbreaking Ceremony of Mayflower MRT Station

Mr Inderjit Singh, Ang Mo Kio GRC Advisor  to the Grassroots Organisations, Mr David Lee and Mr Jon Lee, Organising Co-Chairmen, residents, ladies and gentlemen, good morning to all of you. 大家早上好！

Singapore’s Rail Journey

Very happy today, this is my second groundbreaking this morning. Just now, I was at Lentor MRT and now I am at Mayflower MRT. 一天两个很不简单。27 years ago, we opened our first MRT line – North-South Line and then after that, we opened up East-West Line, North-East Line, Circle Line, Downtown Line. So now got so many lines that we cannot remember all of the names but we are linking up all over Singapore so that it is convenient for people to go to work, go visiting, go shopping and not to have to take a taxi or take your own car. And people use it every day. Now we are going to build a sixth MRT line which is the Thomson-East Coast Line (TEL) from the North, Woodlands all the way coming down through here, into the town center and then going up to East Coast all the way to almost Changi – 43 kilometres and $24 billion. 两百四十亿， 相当大的一笔钱。

With the TEL, Kebun Baru will get an MRT station, which is this Mayflower MRT station. 居民等了很久了，问了很多次了，可是现在就要来了。With the MRT Station, we will be able to connect up very directly and conveniently. We do not have to go to Ang Mo Kio town center or Yio Chu Kang to take the train. The line will be completed in 2021, from here to Downtown and then Downtown to the East Coast by 2024. Then it will be connected to the whole MRT network. 

And we will do this not just here in Kebun Baru or Ang Mo Kio, but all over Singapore. We are going to build more MRT lines and extensions over the next three years. In fact, in the next three years, we are going to expand the line by one quarter – Downtown Line 2, Downtown Line 3, Tuas West Extension – all add together we will have a lot more lines and a lot more trains. If we look at it longer, 2030, that is about 15 years from now, we will double our network and nearly every household, 8 in 10 will be able to live within 10 minutes of a train station so you come downstairs, you walk 10 minutes and you will get there already. And I think that we will make Singapore a really convenient and good place to live for people of all ages.

Where we have built MRT lines around the MRT stations, we have seen communities develop and prosper because it is convenient to live, it is nice to shop, people can come, you can move and so we can draw our residents closer together. And then each station will have their own community, own character and a hub of activity. I look forward to Mayflower station here, which is just along the road behind us, to become a hub of activity where we are going to bring a lot of residents together. 

The theme of the MRT station, the style, the design, they are going to use is a bird theme so you see you have the lattice for hanging bird cages. 可以掉鸟笼的， 因为这里过去有很多爱鸟的，周末都带鸟来听歌，所以我们的新地铁站，就用这个做设计的一个概念，所以一方面是新的但是一方面也怀旧也记得过去Kebun Baru的情形。

Thank you Residents

I hope you all will use the MRT station. We are looking forward to the line but there is going to be a lot of work over the next six years, and there will be dust, there will be noise, there will be inconvenience. I hope residents will understand, accept and will be patient and work with us so that when the station is completed and when the line is working, we will all be able to benefit from the new services and convenience we will have. So thank you very much, 谢谢大家。

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