SINGAPORE — Land cost, terrain and disruption to the local population are among the considerations for the final alignment of the Singapore-Kuala Lumpur High-Speed Rail (HSR) link, said experts, who estimate that it would take a few years to finalise plans and acquire land before the first spade hits the ground for the construction of the highly-anticipated project.

While the Government has already moved to acquire a 12ha plot of land in Jurong East — on which Jurong Country Club sits — for the terminus station, the Malaysian authorities have yet to announce the exact locations of the six transit stations and the terminus on their end.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his Malaysian counterpart, Mr Najib Razak, signed a seven-point agreement that aims for train services to kick off from 2026. The 350km route will feature double tracks on which will run a 90-minute express service between the two terminuses, a shuttle from Jurong East to Iskandar Puteri, as well as a domestic service in Malaysia.

UniSIM senior lecturer Park Byung Joon said the tracks are likely to run along the outskirts of the transit towns of Putrajaya, Seremban, Ayer Keroh, Muar, Batu Pahat and Iskandar Puteri, with connections to the town centre via other forms of transportation.

“It’s a bad idea to try to build a line to the middle of a town. This is a very heavy train running at (high) speed. The noise level is going to be pretty high,” he said.

Land close to town centres would also be pricier, noted Assistant Professor Terence Fan from Singapore Management University. Ultimately, a balance has to be struck between convenience for commuters and other issues such as noise and land acquisition, he added.

Dr Park said the alignment of the route could be tweaked after pre-construction surveys are carried out. “Some of the terrain may not be suitable for the structure and you have to make a detour. In South Korea, if the construction hits an ancient site, there needs to be some change in the route,” he said, adding that this could delay the entire project.

Transport consultant Tham Chen Munn said land acquisition for the HSR line could involve evicting squatters, while Nanyang Technological University land transport expert Gopinath Menon said stations across the Causeway may be built on plots of land already owned by the Malayan Railways.

Professor Chu Jian, director of NTU’s Centre for Usable Space, said: “The location of the HSR line should be selected in such a way that it is cost-effective and yet meets the intended social or economic needs. To achieve a cost-effective design, site reconnaissance and site investigation to understand the geological and soil conditions along the potential alignment are among some of the pre-construction work that should be carried out in both Malaysia and Singapore.”

In terms of the size of the plots of land needed for the Malaysian transit stops, experts doubted these would be similar to the mixed-use development planned for the Jurong East terminus.

National University of Singapore transport researcher Lee Der-Horng said only the KL terminus and Iskandar Puteri station were likely to boast mixed-use spaces, similar to the one in Jurong East. “For the other stations, (development) may not be that extensive. So far, we haven’t really seen any major movement by Malaysia to further materialise the benefits of the HSR to these other stations.”

In Singapore, it is a different story, noted Mr Tham. “We don’t just look at rail infrastructure per se. We look at everything that supports the HSR ... already, the government is building up the Jurong Lake Gardens district and improving the vibrancy of the area.”