The Most Equidistant Journey You Can Make on the Circle Line

[00:00:07]So Circle Line Stage 6 officially opens today.

[00:00:10]But the thing is I've already covered the Public Preview event last Saturday.

[00:00:13]So what's new to cover now?

[00:00:15]Well, there's one thing.

[00:00:16]I'm going to investigate the most equidistant, or equidistant journey that you can make on the Circle Line.

[00:00:22]To explain all this, here's Javin from yesterday who will explain everything that I had to research before today.

[00:00:27]So the Public Preview event was operated as a shuttle service, which would be very different from the actual revenue service that will start from tomorrow, and will most likely represent a real world scenario of such journeys.

[00:00:38]Obviously, to find the real answer will involve a lot of math which is something I do not have the time for, so I simply asked ChatGPT, hoping that they would do the math for me, and they ultimately recommended me Bishan to Cantonment.

[00:00:48]I mean, this also kind of makes sense. If you were to look at the system map, Bishan and Cantonment are shown as direct opposite ends of the circle from north to south.

[00:00:56]But you should know that the system map is not meant to be geographically accurate.

[00:00:59]However, ChatGPT recommended this route based on station intervals.

[00:01:03]And in the case of Bishan to Cantonment, there are 15 stations in between the two stations on both sides.

[00:01:09](Ignoring Bukit Brown station.)

[00:01:11]And so I asked ChatGPT again to recommend based on track distance, and this time it gave a somewhat odd route, which is from Bartley to HarbourFront.

[00:01:20]It seemed to make sense, until I looked at a geographical map of the CCL.

[00:01:24]And not only are the station intervals more imbalanced this time round, but the eastern half of the route is visibly shorter than the western half of the route!

[00:01:31]ChatGPT even made the error of calling the clockwise route from Bartley to HarbourFront the anti-clockwise route, which I find is a very egregious mistake.

[00:01:40]So yes, AI can make mistakes too which is why it's so important to cross-reference.

[00:01:44]But never mind, I uploaded the geographical map of the CCL to ChatGPT for them to go and analyse the geometry, and in the end, it still recommended me the Bishan to Cantonment route.

[00:01:54]I verified this with this footage from Cantonment station that I took during the CCL Public Preview event that shows the estimated travel times.

[00:02:02]I also used that footage to calculate the other routes.

[00:02:05]And it all points to Bishan to Cantonment being the best candidate.

[00:02:09]So I guess that would be the route that I will be putting to the test tomorrow.

[00:02:17]So let's look at what they recommend here from Bishan to Cantonment.

[00:02:21]On the anti-clockwise loop, it looks like it will take 38 minutes.

[00:02:28]But on the clockwise loop, it claims that it will take 36 (minutes).

[00:02:33]So the anti-clockwise train is already here, But maybe I might just wait for the clockwise one just to see if the trip is any faster (than the anti-clockwise route).

[00:03:20]So I'll stop when the doors open... 38 minutes and 54 seconds.

[00:03:31]which is definitely longer than the (estimated) 36 minutes.

[00:03:34]So here we are at the Old Railway Station station.

[00:03:41]I should mention that this station is so quiet on a normal operating day, which is so different from the Public Preview last week.

[00:03:49]This is an entrance that I didn't explore during the Public Preview which is the art museum entrance.

[00:03:55]It's pretty cool.

[00:04:22]Approaching Bishan.

[00:04:23]Actually we're cutting it quite close... Yeah, so on the western side, 39 minutes.

[00:04:38]Eastern side, 38 minutes.

[00:04:39]Actually it's...even closer than I expected.

[00:04:44]And we also should kind of, like, verify that I took the journey from Bishan to Cantonment on the clockwise side.

[00:04:50]But to represent the anti-clockwise journey from Bishan to Cantonment, I basically took the clockwise journey from Cantonment to Bishan.

[00:04:57]But I feel the results will be kind of the same (either way).

[00:04:59]So I hope that clears up the confusion.

[00:05:01]So yeah, so that is the most equidistant, or equidistant journey which is from Bishan to Cantonment that you can make on the Circle Line.

[00:05:09]So that's it, right? Video's over, right?

[00:05:10]Except...not quite.

[00:05:12]Because ChatGPT did recommend a second best journey which is from Buona Vista to Mountbatten.

[00:05:20]But if you were to look on the map here, Mountbatten is not exactly opposite Buona Vista.

[00:05:27]It's actually somewhere between Dakota and Mountbatten.

[00:05:31]That is the real midpoint.

[00:05:32]It means that I have to test this journey out too.

[00:05:35]But because, as you can see, it's getting dark and I'm feeling kind of tired, maybe we'll do this tomorrow.

[00:05:50]Right, so here we are at Buona Vista.

[00:05:52]Time to start our journey.

[00:05:58]So Buona Vista to Mountbatten on the clockwise loop, it takes 37 minutes.

[00:06:06]But on the anti-clockwise loop, here it says 38 minutes!

[00:06:11]Wow, so it might actually be closer than what I thought.

[00:06:15]So maybe we'll wait for the clockwise train to come first.

[00:06:38][Announcer] Please mind the platform gap.

[00:06:41][Announcer] Mountbatten.

[00:06:44]Well, that was quite a bit faster than 37 minutes.

[00:06:46]But anyway, because of administrative reasons, I'm going to stick around here at Mountbatten station and wait for the next clockwise train that will take me to Buona Vista.

[00:07:02]Well, for the sake of brevity, and I'm sure you guys just want to find out the answer, I'm just going to cut straight to... Okay, we're right back where we started.

[00:07:11]And the difference is...also about a minute plus.

[00:07:15]Let's just go upstairs and try and make sense of all this.

[00:07:25]So I've come down here to the Rail Corridor.

[00:07:27]Let's just talk about the results over the last couple of days, alright?

[00:07:31]So for the journey from Bishan to Cantonment, the difference between the two journeys was 1 minute and 3 seconds.

[00:07:37]But to my surprise, for the journey between Buona Vista to Mountbatten, the difference between the two journeys was 1 minute and 7 seconds.

[00:07:47]Which was, like, blazingly close to even Bishan and Cantonment.

[00:07:51]So I guess it's pretty neck and neck between these two.

[00:07:54]It's a lot more neck and neck than I expected.

[00:07:56]But anyway you might be asking, like, what was the point of doing all this?

[00:08:00]Like for example, Bishan to Cantonment, you can actually go through a shorter journey by taking the North-South Line to Marina Bay then change to the CCL.

[00:08:07]And that will save you about 8 to 10 minutes, which I've already tested, which you can see in the footage here.

[00:08:12]I guess this will fulfill the curiosity of some of you who might be randomly thinking, you know, if I go to the Circle Line, which journey will be the same timing whether clockwise or anti-clockwise.

[00:08:22]I guess that's your answer.

[00:08:23]It could be Bishan and Cantonment, it could also be Buona Vista to Mountbatten.

[00:08:28]I guess if you are even more curious to find out the real, exact, most equidistant journey that is even more so than these, where you want to do it manually without any assistance from AI... Hell, maybe you can do it for yourself!

[00:08:40]But I think that's too much homework for me.

[00:08:42]So, I think right now I'm just going to grab a bite, then go home.

[00:08:46]Hope you've enjoyed this, thanks for watching!