Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) will postpone the construction of three new high-speed railway stations to keep operating costs under control and avoid further losses, THSRC chairman Ou Chin-der (歐晉德) said yesterday.
Construction of the three planned stations in the counties of Miaoli, Changhua and Yunlin was scheduled to begin next July.
Ou, who took over as THSRC chairman on Tuesday, said the company’s top priority at the moment is to address its financial woes and now is not the right time to build new stations.
THSRC has been running at a loss, weighed down by interest payments and depreciation. Since beginning operations in January 2007, it has accumulated losses of NT$70 billion (US$2.15 billion) as of the end of June — about 66 percent of its paid-in capital of NT$105.3 billion — and total debts of NT$400 billion.
An agreement reached between THSRC and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ Bureau of High Speed Rail (BHSR) requires the three stations to be completed within 66 months of the start of construction, but no exact timetable detailing their planned completion dates are available, BHSR Director Chu Hsu (朱旭) said.
Work has not begun on any of the three sites.
The high-speed rail system currently has eight stations, which were constructed by THSRC after acquiring land from the central government.
The company decided to build the three additional stations at the request of local residents after the three county governments offered TSHRC the land required.
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