New road to cut through Bukit Brown Cemetery

Bad news - Bukit Brown, at least part of it is going to be turn into...more roads ! Land Transport Authority announced that to ease traffic congestion, they are going to build a new road that dissects through a large chunk of Bukit Brown. They estimate that 5% of the 100,000 graves will be affected by this new road to be build in 2013, which means exhumation of the graves affected will like start early 2012.

With a MRT (Bukit Brown) already been build, i expected that this place will be reclaimed in the near future, but no so fast !

Photo rights belongs to LTA and not me

 The arrow that indicates "New Road" is roughly where the graves of Tan Kheam Hock (a Municipal Commissioner that lobbied for this public grave for the chinese community, Gan Eng Seng and Chew Boon Lay. The road will make access to the slip road towards the graves of Mrs Lim Nee Soon, Mr & Mrs Lim Chong Pang also difficult.

For me, this is a great and wonderful place for birdwatching and losing it earlier than expected is indeed shocking. There might be a movement to petition against the building o this road, but honestly i am very pessimistic that a happy ending is in-sight. Usually if not in all cases, development triumphs over the preservation of this heritage and nature site.

Enjoy the last of your walks there, i am going to try to go there more often too..


Reference:
New dual four-lane road in Bukit Brown to ease traffic. Channelnewsasia, 12 Sept 2011

Previous post
Goodbye Bukit Brown