New boardwalk to Sentosa Island to open in Nov 2010

BY Nov 2010, visitors to Sentosa will have another option of getting to the resort island - on foot. A new 620-m boardwalk with five pairs of covered travellators will make the journey a breeze.

Works on the $70-million boardwalk kicked off on Tuesday.

Ranging from 25m to 40m in width, the walkway will also be lined with retail and food and beverage outlets along the way.

The walkway will link up to Sentosa's integrated resort, Resorts World at Sentosa, which will direct visitors to the resort or to attractions within the rest of the island. It is designed to carry 8,000 visitors per hour in each direction and is part of the resort island's plans to enhance transport links as it gears up for a surge in visitors when the IR opens early next year.

The boardwalk, said Sentosa Leisure Group's chief executive officer Mike Barclay, is part of a $300-million budget to overhaul the transport links on the island to ensure that it can receive the increase in visitors, which is expected to double.

The walkway will offer five different themed gardens, from mangrove, rock garden, terrain and hill, coastal flora and rainforest, giving visitors a different experience as they pass from one zone to the next.

It will be lit at night to offer a different experience. This boardwalk will replace the original pedestrian path along the causeway bridge to the island that was closed in August 2007 for the construction of the second bridge.