The IES Journal Part A: Civil & Structural Engineering

ISSN: 1937-3260 (Print) 1937-3279 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tiea20

Pedestrian archeology in Singapore: experiences

from the past
P.P. Koh, Y.D. Wong & G. Menon
To cite this article: P.P. Koh, Y.D. Wong & G. Menon (2014) Pedestrian archeology in Singapore:
experiences from the past, The IES Journal Part A: Civil & Structural Engineering, 7:4, 297-305
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19373260.2014.951187

Published online: 19 Nov 2014.

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The IES Journal Part A: Civil & Structural Engineering, 2014

Vol. 7, No. 4, 297 305, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19373260.2014.951187

TECHNICAL PAPER
Pedestrian archeology in Singapore: experiences from the past
P.P. Koh*, Y.D. Wong and G. Menon
Centre for Infrastructure Systems, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University,
50 Nanyang Avenue N1-B1b-09, 639798, Singapore

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(Received 11 June 2014; accepted 31 July 2014)

Walking is an important part of the transportation system, as everyone walks. Providing an adequate infrastructure network
promotes walking. Additional walking facilities encourage longer walks, especially in the tropical climate of Singapore.
This paper provides a good documentation of the historical infrastructural developments to enhance the walking
experience in Singapore, from post World War II to present. Lessons learnt from these past experiences are highlighted.
Keywords: pedestrian history; pedestrian infrastructure archive; lessons learnt

1. Introduction

2. Factors affecting walking

Everybody walks everyday. Hence, walking forms part of

everyday life. As technology advances from wheels to
motor, walking is still a necessity for people to travel
from one place to another. Technology only helps one to
travel longer distance but all other modes of transport still
require some form of walking to connect with the origin/
destination.
Walking has been perhaps involuntary in the past as
there were no other means of affordable transport. Hence,
people in the past tended to walk a lot more as compared
to nowadays (with a variety of options available). It has
now evolved to a transport mode that requires transportation practitioners to provide an enhanced walking experience to attract people to walk more. By making the
walking experience more enjoyable and safer, people will
walk more.
Recently, Singapore has been often ranked to be one
of the most walkable cities in the world, having a good
public transportation system and adequate facilities for
pedestrians (Ng et al. 2012; Sanyal 2013; UN Habitat
2013). This is likely attributed to the early recognition of
pedestrians as an important contributor of the transport
system and the continual effort made by the authorities
from decades ago. It is interesting to know more about the
explorations and decisions made in the past and how they
have impacted the way it is now. Valuable lessons could
be learnt from the planning, implementation and postimplementation stages.
This paper serves to document the historical developments on urban planning, with focus on providing for
pedestrians in Singapore. A list of schemes is summarised
in Table 1.

Past researches have been trying to quantify walkability;

however, the way pedestrians feel about their walking system differs by culture and climate influences. Hence, it is
very difficult to have a universal walkability evaluation
matrix and it has to be calibrated to suit the needs of each
country. Koh and Wong (2013) introduced a (11 infrastructural compatibility C distance factors) spider web
representation of the current walking needs in local context (see Figure 1). From face-to-face street survey with
1146 respondents, it was found that weather protection
supplants distance as the most important factor (Tier 1)
for walking, and hence shall be provided after the construction of the basic fundamentals (walkway network).
The next tier (Tier 2) comprises secondary factors for
walking, and should be provided as much as possible.
This includes comfort of walking (smoothness of the
pavement), security (perceived feeling of pedestrians on
theft and crimes around the neighbourhood), traffic accident risk (how well the pedestrians are protected from
motorised vehicles), detour (whether there is good permeability of the neighbourhood where pedestrians can get to
the destination in the shortest path), and lastly the road
crossing delays (whether prioritisation is given to pedestrian instead of the motorised traffic). Tier 3 comprises
good-to-have factors that are usually provided only
when the basic and secondary factors are provided or
when there is surplus budget. They are related to the
topography (stairs/slope) of the land area which is usually
expensive to level, installing comprehensive directional
signs that provide useful real-time information, providing
pleasant landscaping (good scenery) and integrating with
shops.

*Corresponding author. Email: ppkoh1@e.ntu.edu.sg

2014 The Institution of Engineers, Singapore

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Table 1. List of pedestrian improvement schemes implemented (by chronological order).

Year

Scheme implemented

1822
1960s
1950

Five-foot-ways below shophouses

Multi-storey public housing with void decks
Zebra crossings

Basic walking infrastructure

1964
1964
1974
1977
1976
Early 1980s

Underpass for pedestrians (1st installed: Connaught Drive)

Overhead bridge for pedestrians (1st installed: Collyer Quay)
Anti-jaywalking campaign
Pedestrian crossing rules and anti-jaywalking signs
Traffic signals for pedestrians
Pedestrian audio signals

2
2
2

Time-separate pedestrians from

vehicles
Tier-separate pedestrians from vehicles
Tier-separate pedestrians from vehicles
Reduce pedestrian accidents

1989
1992
Mid 1990s
1997
2008
1997
1998
1999
2004
2013
2000

Convert to audio tactile signals

Master plan for pedestrians Phases 1 and 2 (creating pedestrianfriendly walkways)
Countdown pedestrian timer
Convert to single modular signals
Floodlight at zebra crossings (1st installed: slip road from Fort
Road into ECP (Changi))
Art in Transit (North East Line)
Art in Transit walking tours
Raised zebra crossings (1st implemented: Jurong East Street 24
next to Yu Hua Primary School)
Convert the tiny green push button to large push buttons
with LED at pedestrian signal crossings
Safe Drive Zone at schools
Enhanced School Zone (ESZ)
Further improvement to ESZ
Red-amber-green arrows at junctions (1st installed: two junctions
at Yishun new town)

Tier Purpose

Assist visually impaired pedestrians to

cross signalised pedestrian crossings

Encourage more people to walk

Improve pedestrians safety

Improve pedestrians visibility

Improve pedestrians walking

experience

Improve pedestrians visibility

Improve pedestrians walking

experience
Improve pedestrians safety

2005

Intelligent road studs for right-turning vehicles

2005
2006

2
3

2009
2011
2009

Convert light bulb to LED flashing beacons at zebra crossings

Barrier free accessibility at least 1 BFA route from Mass rapid transit
(MRT) station
Lifts are added to 16 MRT stations, BFA enhancement added to 10
stations
BFA to 95% of pedestrian walkways within 400 m radius of MRT/Light
rail transit (LRT) stations, all taxi and bus shelters and all public roads
Expand more sheltered linkways to transport nodes and overhead bridges
Walk2Ride programme to construct sheltered linkways near transport
nodes (expand from 200 400 m)
Green Man Plus at traffic signals
Extend to another 500 locations
Convert solid signalised pedestrian crossing lines to dashed lines

2009

Pedestrian Crossing Ahead Markings

2009

Pedestrian Crossing signs at zebra crossings

2011

Lifts to overhead bridges

2012

Extend to six other overhead bridges

2008
2011
2008
2013

Provide exclusive phase for right

turning motorists, improve safety for
pedestrians
Warn right-turning motorists to look
out for pedestrians
Improve flashing beacon reliability
Improve accessibility of pedestrians
with diverse needs

Provide pedestrians with shelters

Assist people with diverse needs

Improve designated crossing area

visibility
Warn motorists to give way to
pedestrians at zebra crossings
Warn motorists on the presence of
zebra crossing ahead
Assist people with diverse needs to use
overhead bridge
(continued)

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Table 1. (Continued )
Year

Scheme implemented

Tier Purpose

2013
2011

Extend to 40 other overhead bridges

Flushed LED road studs at zebra crossings

2012

Look Markings at zebra crossing

2013
2013

Extend to 50 more locations

Silver Zone

Warn motorists to give way to

pedestrians at zebra crossings
Remind pedestrians to look out for
vehicles before crossings
Warn motorists to look out for elderly

Note: Dates are tagged to the public announcement made; actual completion dates are later; information obtained from Factiva (Archive of news articles)
[1980 current] and News release (LTA) [2008 current].
The bold items indicate the start of the scheme.

Direconal signs

Distance

Comfort

Weather
protecon

4
Good scenery

3
2
Shops along
route

1
Stairs/slope

Accident
risk

Road crossing delay

Detour
Security
Crowdednes

Tier 3 'Good to
have' factors

Addressing diverse needs

Doing the extra miles for pedestrians

Stairs/slope, signs,
scenery, shops

Tier 2 - Secondary
factors
Comfort, security, accident risk,
detour, road crossing delays

Tier 1 - Primary factors

(the fundamental provision)
Weather protecon, distance

Figure 1. Walking factors and pyramid.

Connecng people between opposite sides

of the road

Enhancing pedestrian safety

Providing what was best available

Combang the local climate

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Figure 2. Chinatown in the 1900s (Chinatownology 2014).

2.1.

Providing from what was best available

Pedestrian walkway is the basic form of infrastructure that

is required for walking. In the past, people used to walk
along muddy tracks (famously known as dirt roads) without
any segregation from the motorised vehicles. There were
no proper systems and people have to watch out for one
another (see Figure 2). As far back in 1822, Sir Stamford
Raffles (founder of modern Singapore), stipulated in the
Town Plan that shophouses should have a covered
walkway of about five feet (equivalent to 1.5 m) along its
street front (see Figure 3). These walkways were meant to
protect pedestrians from the hot tropical sun and rain.
Some serve to allow people to window-shop or stop by for
some refreshments. Till today, some of these five-footways are conserved as part of the heritage of Singapore.
The 1 4 storey shophouses typically found near the
city area (which are the depopulated Chinatown, Little
India and Kampong Glam districts of today) could not
cater to the burgeoning growth of population at that time.
This led to the building of the first batch of 23,000 public

Figure 3. Then (left); Now (centre, right): Five-foot-way.

multi-storey apartment units in 1959. However, this first

attempt to re-house the population was inadequate till the
formation of Planning Department and the founding of
Housing Development Board (HDB) in the 1960s. HDB
constructed more than 50,000 multi-storey housing units
within five years. Over the years, the layout of these housings adopted a checkerboard principle with grid-like
precincts. Each new town comprises a transit station/bus
interchange, a town centre, neighbourhood centres
(4000 6000 units) and precincts (7 8 blocks of housing).
A neighbourhood centre contains shopping (some still
keeping the five-foot-way shophouse concept of covered walkways) and communal activity for residents
within walking distance. The concept of a precinct has the
intent to foster community ties among the residents
through the use of open spaces and streetscapes underneath and between residential blocks. This unique local
residential layout provides a very permeable environment
suited for walking as the ground level is typically a void
deck and the blocks are not fenced up.

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Figure 4. The first overhead bridge at Collyer Quay (Memories of Singapore 2012).

With the introduction of the high-rise residential

setup, walkways need to be constructed to link residents
from homes to amenities. It is not uncommon to spot
cement-paved 1.5 m wide walkways along all arterial
roads. These provide dedicated, protected paths that separate pedestrians from the motorised traffic. The rationale
of why footpaths are constructed along roads was to
enhance pedestrian safety within the road reserve and it
was a possible option to slab over some of the open drains
next to roads and not damaging the tree-lines alongside
the roadway. It was also very cost-effective as there is no
need to provide additional street lighting which has been
properly laid out along the roadside. However, this convenient solution then leads to some unforeseeable issues
being faced at present.
When walkways are provided by slabbing over of
open drains, there is a need to provide iron gratings at
intervals for aeration of the water in the drain and for
cleaning. Sometimes, these gratings may pose a tripping
hazard when not maintained properly. Furthermore,
cyclists nowadays tend to leverage on this existing comprehensive network of walkways for their convenience.
The likely reason that cyclists prefer walkways over roads
is that they provide bi-directional and ostensibly safer
travel.
2.2.

Combating the locals climate

In Singapore, the tropical (hot, humid and sometimes wet)

weather is one of the major considerations for one to walk
longer (Koh et al. 2011; Koh and Wong 2013). Being a
garden city, sidewalks are often planted with trees that

provide some shade. Also, the sheltered five-foot-ways

below shophouses and corridors/void decks below public
housing shelter pedestrians from the rain and sunshine. To
connect to the major bus stops, transit stations and amenities, walkways are built with shelters. Recently, LTA has
announced the provision of sheltered walkways from
within the radius of 200 400 m of the transit stations and
other major pedestrian generating amenities like schools
and community centres (Sim 2013).
2.3.

Connecting people between opposite sides

of the road
As population of motorised vehicles increases, roads get
wider, and pedestrians will find it challenging to cross to
the other side. One form of crossing is grade-separated
the underpass and overpass (pedestrian overhead bridge).
The first walk-through underpass that was built in 1964
was across Connaught Drive, to ease the congestion of
traffic. The underpass provides a seamless, undisturbed
walk to the pedestrians. However, constructing an underpass is costly and difficult. Consequently, underpasses
have not been widely constructed after that (54 number as
of 2012) (LTA 2013b). Shortly after the first underpass
was built, Singapores first overhead bridge was built at
Collyer Quay in the same year (see Figure 4). This seemed
to provide a better (safer) option as the pedestrians are
visible to other road users nearby. The minimum requirement of 5.4 m height clearance results in about 36 steps to
climb. Close to 500 overhead bridges are built, as of
2012, but as the population ages, their usage poses problems. As walkways get their shelters, overhead bridge

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connecting to these walkways are also provided with shelters to provide a seamless covered walking journey.
Time-separated schemes were introduced, to allow
pedestrians and motorists to share the road space safely in
an orderly manner. The very first form of time-separated
traffic control at junctions was controlled by officers with
whistle and flags. This was soon replaced by automatic
General Electric Company traffic lights in 1948 (Remember
Singapore 2013). The traffic lights with incandescent bulbs
used up to the 1970s, were replaced by halogen bulbs and
later superseded by light-emitting-diodes (LEDs) since
early 2000s. LEDs are well-known for its reliability and
energy conservation.
The turning traffic give way to crossing pedestrians
was introduced in 1976, which allowed turning traffic and
crossing pedestrians (controlled by green man and red
man signals) to share the green time. This resulted in
almost any signalised junction becoming a safe pedestrian
crossing. The first and only scramble walk (whereby all
vehicles are stopped to give pedestrians an exclusive
green time when they can cross in any fashion within the
junction) was implemented in Singapore in 1997 at Boon
Tat Street/Robinson Road junction. The experiment did
not prove successful as most pedestrians were used to the
main system where they share the green time with turning
traffic. Hence, it was not applied elsewhere. Nevertheless,
scramble crossing can be very effective at locations with
heavy pedestrian traffic crossing in more than one direction, for example at a junction in vicinity of the transit
station.
2.4.

Enhancing pedestrian safety

The many basic schemes are not accident-proof. With

erroneous behaviour of the pedestrians/motorists, accidents do happen. Hence, much has been done to enhance
the safety of pedestrians.
Countdown pedestrian timer was introduced at the
signalised pedestrian crossings in 1992 to display the
amount of time left to cross once the flashing green man
starts. This reduces the number of unintentional violators,
hence enhancing safety.
Singapore has adopted the permissive right-turn (lefthand driving) system at junctions. In this configuration,
pedestrians are released with the straight through traffic.
Most of the pedestrians would have cleared the crossing
before the right-turning vehicle can find gaps in the opposite stream. However, sometimes during low traffic, there
could be some conflicts between the motorists and pedestrians. Hence, there are several schemes implemented to
warn right-turning motorists to give way to pedestrians.
These include right-turn pockets, intelligent road studs
that will blink with the green man, give-way-to-pedestrians signs and Red-Amber-Green arrows (exclusive
right-turn phase).

At the uncontrolled zebra crossings, motorists need to

give way to pedestrians. Many of these crossings are
located along the slip roads at junctions or mid-block
between junctions along minor roads with low traffic volumes. Zebra crossings are demarcated with white strips
with two flashing beacons and the blue pedestrian crossing
signs. Initiatives to enhance safety at such locations
include attaching flood lights to improve the visibility of
crossing pedestrians, attaching luminous orange discs
below the flashing beacons, converting flashing beacons
from light bulbs to more reliable LEDs, lowering of the
flashing beacon pole to become more conspicuous to the
motorists, raising the zebra crossings (with humps and
painted checkered yellow rectangles at both sides) to
improve visibility, installing LED road studs across the
crossing and painting the Look markings to warn pedestrians to look out for oncoming traffic.
2.5. Addressing diverse needs
There are segments of the population with mobility constraints such as the elderly, caregiver with prams, people
with trolleys and other mobility challenged groups.
Barrier free accessibility (BFA) requirements started
as early as late 1990s. The very first efforts involved a
taskforce set up in 1999 to identify footpaths with high
kerbs found in public places such as town centres, schools,
bus interchanges and MRT/LRT stations (LTA 2000).
These kerbs were reconstructed with kerbcut ramps to
reduce the height from 75 to 25 mm to facilitate the
elderly and those in wheelchairs. Until recently, the BFA
requirements were stipulated to have at least two BFA
access routes from transit stations (LTA 2011b). BFA is
also available in all public housing estates (Siong 2012)
and some private estates. The programme includes constructing on/off ramps with handrails at locations with
stairs, installing drop kerbs at crossing points, removing
obstacles from walkways and upgrading major transport
nodes with tactile-guidance system. The overhead bridges
which have been built to solve congestion problem now
become hurdles to the people with mobility constraints to
climb. Subsequently, ramps were built as alternative to
the stairs to connect to the overhead bridges as part of the
BFA initiatives. However, these ramps tend to be overly
long and take up a lot of space. Most of the other overhead
bridges are built with stairs. To cater to the mobility challenged group, the most recent initiative by LTA is to provide lifts at some of the overhead bridges (LTA 2013a).
To assist the elderly to cross the road safely, traffic signal timing are extended to cater to their slower crossing
speeds. An elderly by tapping his/her senior citizen travel
concession card on a card reader below the push button is
able to extend up to 13 seconds of the green man timing.
The initiative, Green Man Plus, was piloted in 2009 and has
received numerous favourable feedback from the public and

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Figure 5. Pagoda street market in the 1960s (source: Old postcard of Singapore) and present (2010s).

now it is being expanded to include other mobility challenged users with added features (LTA 2011a).
Pedestrian audio signal is the beeping sound that
pedestrians hear at pedestrian crossings. These signals are
to help the visually handicapped pedestrians to know the
location of the crossing, onset and ending of green man
and the opposite end of the crossing. In the early 1980s,
pedestrian audio signals were mounted as loudspeakers on
top of the pedestrian signal heads (Koh et al. 2012). At
that time, the audio signals were meant to signify the
crossing period for all pedestrians. The crossing tones
from the loudspeakers are often quite annoying to nearby
residents. Hence, the new version of the beeping audio
signals are mostly installed at mid-block crossings and
selected junctions based on demand.
Another group of vulnerable pedestrians are the school
children. They are the less experienced ones who need
attention from the other road users. Many schemes have
been implemented to target at these young users. All
school children in Primary Five need to spend half a day
at the Road Safety Community Park, supervised by the
Traffic Police to learn the essentials of road safety including the kerb drill on how to cross a road safely. One of the
pioneer efforts includes the School Zone before 1998,
where School Zone, speed limit (40 kph) and prohibitory
signs were put up based on Traffic Police/school requests
(LTA 1998). After that, Safe Drive Zone was implemented in 1999 (LTA 2004). Under the scheme, parent
and resident volunteers serve as community wardens to
guide children across the road outside their schools. There
were also painted footprints to guide the pedestrians to
look out for traffic. In 2004, LTA launched the Enhanced
School Zone which bears the conspicuous red pavements
and enhanced school zone signs at all primary schools.
Recently, the scheme is further enhanced by lowering the
speed limit to 40 kph along roads fronting the schools,
installing a warning When lights flash sign with flashing
amber lights to warn motorists of the part time speed limit
and incorporating a new safety toolkit with traffic calming
measures and reminder messages.

2.6.

Doing the extra mile for pedestrians

In 1989, the Public Works Department rolled out a

$122 million master plan to make walking an attractive
option (Soh 1989). Phase I of the programme focused on
walkways in the Civic/Business District and Orchard
Road areas. Phase II concentrated on other city spots
like Chinatown, Boat Quay and Little India. The pedestrian-friendly schemes include more attractive tiles and
wider pavements, improving landscaping like fountains,
pools, small parks and sculptures, and using new designs
for all street furniture such as rest points, traffic signs,
bus shelters, lighting, street directories and ramps for
disabled.
Closing streets to solely pedestrian use (known as
pedestrianisation) was also one of the proposed plans in
the programme. It started as early as mid 1990s with the
first street at Pagoda Street to turn into a car-free mall.
Pagoda Street in the Chinatown is bustling with commercial activities with shophouses at both sides of the street
(see Figure 5). There is also the Sri Mariamman Temple
and it is a popular tourist spot. To convert it to a pedestrian mall, the road is paved with tiles with specially
designed benches, lights, street signs and dustbins (The
Straits Times 1992). The next pedestrianisation includes
the plaza next to Peoples Park Complex, New Bridge
Road, Eu Tong Sen Street, Clarke Quay and Boat Quay.
Yuen and Chin (1998) provide a good literature on pedestrian streets in Singapore.
Partial pedestrianisation (in terms of partial closure by
timing or lanes) is also common in Singapore. For example, a portion of the Boon Tat Street, which is a one-way
street in the central business district (CBD), is now officially closed to traffic every evening after 7 pm. Food vendors occupy the space and open for business and it has
since been a popular food alley in the CBD area. Another
form of partial pedestrianisation is the partially cordoned
road closure to events like cycling and marathons, held
usually during the weekends. Cycling races began as early
as 1934, one of which was organised by the Singapore
Cycling Club (SCC 1933).

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To provide pedestrians with excellent shop-whilewalking experience, the first air-conditioned overhead
bridge was converted from the open overhead bridge
across Shenton Way in 1971. This bridge (Change Alley
Aerial Plaza) with shops on both sides, links Raffles Place
to shops in Clifford Pier (URA 2013). However, with the
development of surrounding commercial buildings, the
crowd using the shops has dropped drastically. Subsequently, overhead bridge connections (second storey
links) are only considered when the surrounding developments have an extended network of pedestrian decks at
the second storey or when there are constraints to build
underground links. The first underground pedestrian link
mall (City Link) was opened in 2000 to link up Raffles
City, Marina Square, the Padang and future Singapore
Arts Centre (now known as Esplanade). Other recent
underground pedestrian link malls include Dhoby
Xchange, Tanjong Pagar Xchange, Esplanade Xchange
and Marina Bay Link Mall. All of these are linked to
MRT stations with great pedestrian flows. At the new residential towns, new urban design concept incorporating
green community spaces such as sky-rise greening, garden
walk and non-motorised infrastructure network, for sustainable living characterises the next generation. This is
evident in the latest HDB housing projects such as Punggol Matilda, Tampines North and Bidadari.
3. Discussions and conclusions
This paper provides a comprehensive documentation of
the historical development of Singapores pedestrian
infrastructure from post World War II till present. Lessons
learnt from the past allow others to build it right from
the start. Fortunately, Singapore has paid sufficient attention in the distant past such that major retrofitting is not
required now to rectify the existing infrastructure to meet
the changing diverse needs of road users.
As the paper has demonstrated, Singapores pedestrian
network can be graded to be at the top of the walking pyramid. The fundamentals have been provided with great
quality and the secondary level has also been provided at
great length. The only part that needs improvement will
be greater accessibility for the mobility disadvantaged to
use pedestrian overhead bridges and the good-to-have
factors like landscaping the walking environment and providing the walking route with shops nearby. Pedestrianisation could be extended further to mimic European car-free
town zones on a larger scale basis instead of the current
single road conversion.
The planning/construction of pedestrian infrastructure
network can be said to encourage cycling revival indirectly. Many cyclists today leverage on the availability of
existing pedestrian walkway network, out of convenience
(bi-directional) and a safer option than riding along the

roadways. With the implementation of BFA, this indirectly provides cyclists to greater advantage of smoother,
continuous travel on walkways. The availability of this
defacto cycle network works well too with the recent
implementation of off-road cycling tracks, especially at
locations with no available space where the existing walkways serve as transition segments.
While greenery provides shade for users and adds to
the landscape of the environment, it may hinder the retrofitting of additional infrastructure to the road network. For
example, there often exists space constraints when constructing a cycling track between the pedestrian footpath
and building boundary line.
In the long run, more prioritisation should be given to
pedestrians and other non-motorised transport to convert
the motor-centric environment to a sustainable transport
system.
Acknowledgements
The first author would like to thank Dr. Chin Kian Keong for his
moral support of the work.

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