Land expropriation disputes in Kaohsiung’s Fengshan District (鳳山) might thwart a government plan to complete the city’s underground railway system in December next year, the Railway Reconstruction Bureau said.
The bureau on Tuesday last week said that difficulties encountered in buying private land in Fengshan had delayed progress by more than a year, jeopardizing the railway’s scheduled completion.
Some Fengshan residents, unhappy with prices the government has offered to buy their land, have refused to sell their property at the proposed price.
Photo: Wang Jung-hsiang, Taipei Times
The bureau is bargaining with landowners with the mediation of Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsu Chih-chieh (許智傑) and has obtained the right to use most of the land in the district that is needed, it said.
The scheduled completion date could still be achieved if a deal with Fengshan landowners is reached in the next two months, as the remaining administrative and engineering activities could be accelerated, the bureau said, adding that it is to continue to aim to meet the December next year deadline.
Hsu said he is doing everything he can to assist the bureau and that he believes trains would be running by the end of next year.
The underground rail program is too important for Kaohsiung’s transportation system for it to be delayed, he said.
However, a local source with insight into the project said that, by even a “conservative estimate,” delays in Fengshan mean the underground railway is unlikely to be completed until March 2019, while completion of above-ground facilities are likely to be delayed until 2023.
The Kaohsiung underground railway was projected is to run 15.37km from Zuoying District (左營) to Fengshan District along the north-south axis.
The project is divided into three sections — Zuoying, Kaohsiung and Fengshan — with an estimated total budget of NT$999 million (US$30.18 million).
The Fengshan leg, where a row over land prices occurred, is the last section of the program to have its budget approved, the last section on which work began and has the slowest rate of progress, with less than 50 percent of the construction stated as complete as of January.
An engineering and construction worker said on condition of anonymity that while reaching operational status by next year is a “highly challenging” goal, estimates that put project completion at 2019 or later are too pessimistic.
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