The Sentosa Express high-tech monorail system, a new access from the Singapore mainland to the island resort, has completed and will commence operations next month.

S. Iswaran, Minister of State for Trade and Industry, announced this at the Sentosa Express handover ceremony here Monday.

Sentosa Island, once a coastal military base, has been transformed over the past 34 years to become one of Singapore's leisure destinations, attracting over 5 million visitors annually. In the early days, visitors could access Sentosa only by boat. Today, visitors have the choice of taking the cable car, driving across the causeway bridge or taking the Sentosa Express in next month.

This high-tech monorail system, costing 140 million Singapore dollars (about 90 million U.S. dollars), is integral to the Sentosa's 12 billion Singapore dollars (about 7.7 billion U.S. dollars) master plan to redevelop and rejuvenate the island resort.

Sentosa now offers a lot of entertainment options including the Sentosa Luge, Sky Tower, the Images of Singapore and the Merlion. It also offers hotels, golf courses, yacht clubs and waterfront residences. In the next few years, the biggest attraction is the Sentosa Integrated Resort (IR) plan.

The minister was confident that Sentosa will surpass the target of receiving over 8 million visitors annually by 2010, two years ahead of schedule.

Source: Xinhua