Singapore’s Coast-to-Coast Trail

Standard three-part sign, Coast-to-Coast Trail, Ang Mo Kio. The trail’s path is marked PCN for “park connector network.”

I’ve written about Singapore’s “park connectors” before.¹ These are paths for pedestrians and cyclists that are generally separate from the city’s conventional sidewalks. The park connectors often follow Singapore’s coasts or its abundant watercourses. Sometimes they pass through parkland as well. By early 2019 there were said to be 300 km of park connectors in Singapore. In other words, they covered a greater distance than Singapore’s impressive—and growing—rail transit system. I don’t believe that there’s ever been a count of park connector users, but you don’t have to spend too much time on Singapore’s park connectors to realize that they’ve been quite successful in encouraging a fair number of Singaporeans to get out and move around.

Singapore’s older park connectors were joined in late March 2019 by a new kind of path for pedestrians and cyclists: the Coast-to-Coast Trail. The C2C Trail (as it’s often called) is 36 km long. It takes you from Jurong Lake Gardens in southwest Singapore all the way to Coney Island in the extreme northeast. Despite the trail’s name, it doesn’t quite reach the southwest coast, which is dominated by industry and port facilities and would make an odd location for a hiking trail.

Map showing route of Coast-to-Coast Trail as well as older park connectors, the Rail Corridor, and rail transit lines. The Rail Connector is a path for pedestrians and cyclists that follows the right-of-way of the old railroad line to Kuala Lumpur. Most of it for the moment is closed (or semi-closed), but it should reopen within a couple of years. MRT lines are heavy-rail lines. LRT lines would be called people movers in much of the world. “U/C” = “under construction.” Base GIS data are mostly from the Geofabrik version of OpenStreetMap and from the government of Singapore. I’ve had to modify them quite a lot.

I walked essentially the whole trail a couple of times in the course of a mid-November trip to Singapore, and the following comments are largely based on what I observed. Of course, I did look at relevant websites and articles in the Singapore press.²

The literature on the C2C Trail talks about it as being a “curated” trail. I think that what’s meant here is that the trail takes you close to some of Singapore’s more interesting, but not obviously urban, features. Thus, it starts at the attractive park surrounding Jurong Lake, which includes Japanese and Chinese gardens, a pagoda, and a Science Centre. It passes by Bukit Batok and Bukit Timah, two parks centering on substantial hills that are covered by dense tropical forest. It also comes close to MacRitchie Reservoir, a large water body in the middle of the island. It then takes you through Ang Mo Kio, a new town that contains three appealing parks: Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park, Ang Mo Kio Town Garden West, and Ang Mo Kio Linear Park. The trail’s last ten or so kilometers are along watercourses and reservoirs in Sengkang and Punggol (which I wrote about in an earlier post). Coney Island, at the trail’s end, is a forested island in Johor Straits that is kept semi-wild.

Much of the trail follows already existing park connectors. That’s especially true at its two ends. (You can identify these on the map by looking for green lines under the black dashes.)

The Coast-to-Coast Trail in Jurong Lake Gardens. Note the light-pole banner. Similar banners can be found all along the trail. In the background is an MRT train.

The Coast-to-Coast Trail along Sungei Punggol, Sengkang. Here the trail follows a pre-existing park connector that hugs the edge of a river that’s been turned into a reservoir.

A few of the existing park connectors used by the C2C Trail seem to have been created essentially to connect park connectors. An example is an elaborate set of paths under and over the Pan Island Expressway between Jurong East and Bukit Batok.

The Coast-to-Coast Trail’s elaborate tunnel-plus-bridge route under then over the Pan Island Expressway.

Where the C2C Trail doesn’t follow existing park connectors, it often runs along busy roads, following long-existing (but often improved) sidewalks. Sometimes, there’s a substantial strip of thick tropical vegetation between trail users and the highway, but sometimes there really isn’t. In one place the trail runs briefly as a sidewalk next to the Lornie Highway, a freeway!

View from the bridge used by the Coast-to-Coast Trail to get over Lornie Highway. Note the familiar three-part sign near the center of the photo.

Most of the busy highways aren’t freeways, but they generally aren’t little-used side streets either. Examples of major highways followed by the trail are Bukit Timah, Adam, and Marymount Roads.

The Coast-to-Coast Trail along Bukit Timah Road. The trail follows the covered walkway and passes through the bus stop at left. The fencing along the sidewalk is typical.

Short of passing through Singapore’s green central area (which includes space set aside for the military), it’s a little hard to see how the trail’s creators could have avoided the problem of following major highways. Central Singapore is somewhat hilly. Thus, it doesn’t have the kinds of lazy tropical rivers and canals that many of the older park connectors follow. Its human geography created some issues for trail placement too. Some (not all) of the area more or less northwest of the central business district developed during the colonial period as a neighborhood of substantial houses for well-off colonists. The area maintained its prestige after independence and became the kind of place that wealthy Singaporeans gravitated to. Here and there institutions (like schools) moved in as well. Many of the single-family houses and institutions acquired walls around their property at one point. The area became quite automobile-oriented by (I think) the 1960s. Commercial establishments often have substantial parking lots. Even when apartment buildings were added to the mix, they included parking and in most cases are surrounded by walls. As in other suburban areas all over the world, minor roads tend not to take you very far. You need to follow crowded arterials to get anywhere. This is the kind of country that the C2C Trail takes you through for something like a third of its length. You have to be a pretty dedicated urban walker to find the idea of walking along busy suburban highways very attractive. It’s arguable that the C2C Trail’s routing along highways, inevitable as it may have been, is a something of a defect.

Another distinctive characteristic of the C2C Trail is that, except at its beginning and end, it does not really lead you through most of the places it brings you to; instead it takes you by them. Thus, instead of going through Bukit Batok and Bukit Timah Parks, for example, it follows major roads at the edge of these parks. Going through Bukit Batok Nature Park would have required only a short detour (Bukit Timah, Singapore’s highest point, would have required a much longer detour, and some real climbing).

Here the Coast-to-Coast Trail follows heavily-trafficked Old Jurong Road at left rather than cutting through forested Bukit Batok Nature Park at right.

The same thing happens at MacRitchie Reservoir, which you can only see through some trees from Lornie Road. Similarly, Ang Mo Kio’s three parks would have made easy diversions. Ang Mo Kio Linear Park runs parallel to the C2C Trail for 1200 m, but those who stick to the trail never do get to see the park, which is up on a mild rise above busy Ang Mo Kio Avenue 5.

The Coast-to-Coast Trail in the center, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 5 at left, Ang Mo Kio Linear Park at right.

Diverting through these and other parks along with the way would have reduced the amount of time that trail users spend along busy highways.

The trail also takes you through Bukit Batok and Ang Mo Kio, successful new towns. In Bukit Batok, it mostly follows drainage canals that parallel highways that aren’t particularly crowded. In Ang Mo Ko, the C2C Trail stays on main highways, bypassing the thriving city center. Those walking on the trail through new towns will find that they’re sharing the trail with local people who, I’m sure, in most cases have no idea that they’re on the Coast-to-Coast Trail. The new-town segments are generally pleasant and interesting places to walk.

The Coast-to-Coast Trail in Bukit Batong.

An oddity of the trail is that it encounters numerous construction sites. That reflects the fact that Singapore is still growing quickly. Detours around construction areas are typically not marked, for example in Ang Mo Kio Town Garden West.

Construction along Ang Mo Kio Avenue 5.

Detours are especially numerous along Marymount Avenue, which is the site of construction of the North-South Corridor, an underground freeway that will some day take drivers from Woodlands in northern Singapore all the way to the central business district. (I can’t resist adding that Singapore’s desire to become a “car-lite” society is somewhat at odds with the support being given to this expensive project, which at least will contain bus lanes.)

The trail is generally well-marked. There are standard three-part signs every few dozen meters and (at least for now) banners posted on light poles as well. A few turns, however, are not well marked at all. I found myself completely confused, for example, where, going northeast, you’re supposed to turn left from Bukit Batok East Avenue 6 to Bukit Batok East Avenue 3. I’ll admit that the problem would have been solved by consulting the excellent app available from the National Parks Board.

I was struck by the fact that, while most of the parts of the C2C Trail that follow existing park connectors—for example, the trails along watercourses in Punggol at its northern end—were pleasantly but not overwhelmingly busy, the segments along major roads had few pedestrians. Because these areas are just inherently less attractive for walking, running, or bicycling, that really isn’t very surprising.

I did, however, meet a few people who were in the process of walking or running the whole trail, or a large part of it. Doing this in a day has actually become a distinctive challenge for a certain sort of Singaporean. Weekends are when you’re most likely to meet people covering the whole trail. (I suspect there were many more such people when the trail first opened last March.)

Of course, walking the Singapore’s entire C2C Trail in a day isn’t quite the challenge that, say, walking the whole Appalachian or Pacific Coast Trail over a couple of months (or much longer) is, but it has an analogous kind of goofy appeal for some of us. I acknowledge that, if you’re not bothered by heat and humidity, doing the C2C in a day is a pretty low-risk project. If you get hungry, there are plenty of excellent and/or cheap eating places along the way. If you get tired, there’s likely to be a bus stop within a few dozen meters no matter where you are, and the C2C Trail even intersects with train lines at several points. There is of course virtually no street crime in Singapore, so the human geography poses no dangers. Car drivers are likely to defer to pedestrians as long as they cross streets where and when they’re supposed to. There are even friendly signs from the government telling you what to do if you encounter a stray dog or a wild monkey. Singapore’s a pretty benign place (except maybe for the risk of contracting dengue fever).

Sign telling you what to do if you encounter wild monkeys.

It appears that walking and running pedestrians are intended to be the main users of the C2C Trail. But most of the Trail can also be traversed by bicycle. I also came across quite a few users of what in acronym-mad Singapore are called PMDs (personal mobility devices), that is, scooters and electric bicycles, even though these were recently banned from using pedestrian paths after a series of serious accidents. These devices have of course become a problem for pedestrians all over the world.

Singapore’s National Parks planners are working on a still more ambitious trail: the 150 km Round Island Route (RIR). Like the C2C Trail, the RIR will use existing park connectors and existing road sidewalks for part of the way, but it will of necessity have to include substantial new sections, including several quite long stretches through parts of western and northern Singapore that are now hard to access by any means. The RIR is not expected to be completed until 2035, but a short (120 km) version of the trail, including a long stretch on the Rail Corridor, is supposed to be open in a couple of years.

In the last few years, Singapore has been putting as much energy into creating pedestrian infrastructure as any city in the world. I found the Coast-to-Coast Trail quite an impressive example of this effort.