Johor Bahru day trips are about to get a whole lot easier. From February 2027, the Rapid Transit System (RTS) Link will shuttle travellers between Singapore's Woodlands North station and Bukit Chagar in JB in roughly five minutes – one stop, no Causeway traffic, no bus scrums.
The project is a joint effort between Singapore's Land Transport Authority and Malaysia's MRT Corp, formally signed off in 2020. Eight driverless trains, each with four carriages and carrying over 600 passengers, will run at speeds up to 80km/h, moving up to 10,000 people per hour in each direction. Trains start at 6am and run until midnight, with peak wait times as short as 3.6 minutes.
The part that really matters to travellers: immigration is cleared once, at departure. Heading to JB, you'll pass through Singapore's ICA checks and Malaysia's CIQ checks under one roof at Woodlands North before boarding – then simply walk off the train at Bukit Chagar with no further checks. Compare that with the current routine of queuing at two separate checkpoints by bus or car.
Getting there is straightforward too. Woodlands North RTS station connects directly to Woodlands North MRT on the Thomson-East Coast Line, so it's a seamless transfer from the city. That's a big upgrade on the existing KTM Shuttle Tebrau, which requires a bus ride to the checkpoint and only runs about once an hour. That shuttle will be retired in 2027, within six months of the RTS Link's launch.
On price, nothing is locked in yet, but Malaysia's Transport Minister Anthony Loke has suggested one-way fares around S$5 to S$7, with off-peak rates and season passes planned for regular crossers. Whether fares will be pegged differently in SGD and MYR remains to be seen.
One quirk worth knowing: under the Cross-Border Railways Bill, if a train breaks down, responsibility falls to the country where it stops – and if it halts exactly on the boundary, the nose of the train decides which side handles it.
For anyone who treats JB as their default weekend escape – hawker food, malls, massages – this changes the maths entirely. A five-minute train with a single immigration stop makes spontaneous dinners and half-day shopping runs genuinely viable, and should take the pain out of school holiday peak periods. If the timeline holds, the launch could even land in time for Chinese New Year 2027, one of the busiest Causeway crossings of the year. Keep an eye on fare announcements closer to launch, and get ready to swap the jam for a five-minute hop.
