Took a trip to the newly opened Marina Barrage last Saturday. I reached Marina Bay Mrt about 5pm and directions to the shuttle bus service upon leaving Marina Bay were clear and got to the waiting area without any trouble.

On the website it's stated that there is a 40 seater bus every half hour. The queue that I saw forming was definitely more than what a 40 seater could carry. As I waited I saw people slowly leaving the queue because of the long queue of people and the heat didn't help.

Finally saw the bus coming and along with it came a small 12 seater. But the two buses were not enough to carry everyone.

Reached Marina Barrage after a short 10-15min trip and the place was crawling with people.

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View when you enter Marina Barrage

Lots of people were there mostly taking photos, playing football, walking along the barrage itself and some were even trying to fly kites.

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People having fun

Soon it was night fall, the night scene at the barrage was beautiful and you can get a good shot of the flyer without using a long lens. Most of my shots were taken using a 18-70mm Nikon on my trusty D70 which translate to about 28-105 in 35mm.


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About 7:15pm I left the place and started joining the queue for the shuttle bus back to Marina Bay mrt. First thing that I noticed was that there were still many people strolling in, and there was a jam just outside the barrage. Cars were trying to go out and come in, and it didn't help that the roads at the place were single lane roads.

And the queue for the bus was long, and due to the jam I waited almost 45 mins before I saw the bus coming. Lucky managed to squeeze up the bus, and what's the worse thing was the driver shouted out to those still queueing that his was the last bus liaoz. And couple with the fact that there are no bus services in and taxis were quite unlikely to go in (abit remote lah), the possibility of walking the 3 plus km to the nearest mrt is almost a certainly. This is one part which i think PUB/whoever is running the place didn't take into account.

Like most new places in Singapore, during the first few weekends everyone will definitely be wanting to go take a look at the place, so they should probably take into account the demand and the fact that there is no public transport into the place. I didn't see anyone there who was directing traffic/managing the bus queue, hopefully they will sort this out soon and arrange for public bus services to the barrage during the weekends. If not the vision of having this park in the city will not be realised.

So for those going during the weekends, beware of the crowds and the bus timings :)