2023-09-05 13:19:56
Geethu Rajendran
Once upon a time in Shinar in Babylonia, men decided to build a tower that would reach as high as heaven. When God saw the tower of Babel rising, he was afraid and divided the people by making them speak different languages. This is the biblical story regarding the emergence of many languages in the world. Man’s obsession with the ‘biggest’ can be seen in the story. Although the Tower of Babel might not be built, men did not shrink from building ‘the greatest’.
The Great Wall of China, the Burj Khalifa, the Hangzhou Bay Bridge and the Three Gorges Dam are human-sized monuments of desire. The largest, tallest, and longest manmade structures are yet to come. Even the proudest structures of many of the world’s nations are measured on the basis of this size. Countries are now following tallest bridge, buildings, big dams, longest roads etc.
These ‘major projects’ are also a measure of the country’s progress. But big projects don’t always end well. There are not few projects that are stalled and protracted following many construction works have been done by spending crores of rupees. One of them is the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore high-speed rail project. A massive high-speed rail project connecting Kuala Lumpur and Singapore in Malaysia. The political changes and financial crises following the construction of several kilometers at the expense of crores have hindered the progress of the project. The project is starting following years of waiting. The decision to end the railway was made when the operation of the railway was progressing steadily. Now that the project has almost been abandoned, the government is preparing to restart it.
To bring Kuala Lumpur and Singapore closer together
The idea of a high-speed rail link between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore in Malaysia was conceived in the 1990s. The project envisioned a 350 km high-speed rail line starting from Bandar Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, passing through Malacca, Seremban and the western regions of Malaysia and ending at Jurong East in Singapore.
The idea did not go ahead due to the huge cost of construction. This journey takes seven hours by normal train time. If by road it will be 4-5 hours. The purpose of the high-speed rail was to avoid this delay and make it easy to reach Singapore from Kuala Lumpur. But the name of the project was in front of the speedy implementation of the project.
After waiting till 2006, the project will see the light of day. Kuala Lumpur’s express rail link operator, YTL Corporation, expressed interest in the project in 2006. The project was modified to reach a speed of 250 km/h from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. YTL’s promise was to deliver from one city to another in 99 minutes. But in 2008, the Malaysian government withdrew from the project following hearing the enormous amount of money required for construction.
Later in 2010, heated discussions once more took place regarding the high-speed rail project. Once once more, the rail project is in the government’s discussions, with the hope that connecting the important economic hubs of Singapore and Malaysia will accelerate the growth of the financial sector. The government has decided to find the necessary finance for the project by incorporating the Malaysian government’s Economic Transformation Program road map. Further studies were conducted in December 2010 and January 2011. It was the then Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, who tried to revive the project. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has also accepted. The two joined hands in 2013 to make the high-speed railway a reality. The target was to complete the construction by 2026.
The general election in Malaysia in 2018 turned things upside down. Najib Razak was ousted by Mahathir Mohamad as Prime Minister. Ambe abandoned the new PM Rail project. Mahathir Mohamad later corrected that the project was being delayed due to cost overruns. Although it was said that the railway will start operating in 2031 following the construction is completed, the political crisis in Malaysia became a topic once more in 2020. With Mohyudin Yassin taking office as the new Prime Minister of Malaysia, the project was once more thrown into limbo. The new government once more asked for time to review the plan. After the two governments might not reach an agreement on the project, it was announced that the project would be abandoned in January 2021.
At that time, the Malaysian government had already initiated measures such as land acquisition. They initiated the second largest land acquisition process for railway construction. Malaysia had to pay Singapore 15 million Singapore dollars as compensation when the project was cancelled. Both governments have decided to revive the scheme once more following the spread of Covid. It was announced that Malaysia has decided to go ahead with the project at the end of 2020. But once more differences of opinion between the two governments led to the project being abandoned once more. In 2023, the Malaysian government once more scrapped the project, which was on file for two years. The Malaysian government is now inviting proposals from private companies to implement the project.
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