Mon, Dec 06, 1999 page18

• Playing both ends against the middle on the high-speed rail

  • Anthony Lawrance 安東尼
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  Pros and cons: Whether you think the project is something Taiwan can't live without or see it as a huge waste of money, accept the fact that it will be built

  So much hype has engulfed the High-Speed Railway since its inception that it seems impossible to write anything sensible about it now. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has an opinion about whether the NT$440 billion bullet train project is a good thing for Taiwan and, in most cases, it's hopeless to try to sway them from their own take on the issue. But let's have a go anyway. First, the optimists. Oh yes, oh yes, they say. Taiwan needs a high-speed railway so that it can more evenly spread its economic development between Taipei and Kaohsiung. Really? Have you ever traveled down the west coast of Taiwan? To call much of it an industrial wasteland would be kind. The only parts that still seem to be vaguely rural are those that the Council of Agriculture is determined to keep from the clutches of property developers.

  In any case, a perfectly good provincial railway system exists which could be upgraded to provide an attractive alternative to driving on Taiwan's congested roads. (Incidentally, again contrary to the hype, this is the high-speed railway's main objective, and not, as has been claimed, to take passengers away from the airlines.) Well, that seems to have taken care of the contrarians who like to root for the bullet train. Now for the armchair experts. Their first line of attack is usually that the project will never make money, just as no other bullet train -- never mind a build-operate-transfer (BOT) project -- has ever done anywhere else in the world.

  

  This really is a no-brainer. Of course such grand, ambitious projects don't turn a profit. But that hasn't stopped Japan, Italy, Germany, France and a bunch of others from going ahead with high-speed railway lines of their own. Why? Because governments will pay for them. Why? Because voters love to sit in space-age carriages as the countryside whizzes by -- even if it's only once in a blue moon. It makes them feel sophisticated, it's easier to catch than a plane, you don't have to worry about falling asleep at the wheel or whether the traffic will be hell ? there are so many reasons why voters would love their governments to put a bullet train in their Christmas stockings. And seeing as they are convinced the government squanders most of their taxes anyway, why not opt for a bit of extravagance that everyone and their families can enjoy?

  This goes double for Taiwan, of course. And besides, there really is no upside to canceling the project from the KMT's point of view. It would spark a crisis of confidence in the party's ability to govern (as if any more evidence were needed) and would be a crushing disappointment to many influential people -- especially those who stand to make a bundle from the line's construction.

  Look, it can't be denied that there are a lot of things going wrong with the high-speed railway. The Bureau of High-Speed Rail, for one, seems to be more interested in facilitating property development along the route than anything else. It still hasn't taken care of all 28 items on "Railway Baroness" Nita Ing's wish list from the hardball phase of their negotiations a few months back. Her company, the Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp (THSRC), meanwhile, is having a hard time awarding the main contracts for the civil engineering work and has even had to re-tender two of them. To be fair, this is partly because THSRC seems unsure of how to spread its risk throughout the project -- thanks, again, to its having to deal with a government that still, after all these years, doesn't understand the basic principles of BOT.

  It hasn't helped, either, that prior to last week, the banks wouldn't offer a penny to the project until the government gave them Taiwan's version of an explicit guarantee -- a wink from the Council for Economic Planning and Development. But the situation in which the company finds itself is also partly the result of its own quandary over how to divide up the bullet train pie between local and international contractors. Personally, I don't envy Ing. Would you like to tell the gangsters who prowl the upper floors of Taiwan's construction industry that sorry, you're giving their work to foreigners? Or the head of a local faction on whom the KMT is so dependent to get out the vote? Ing doesn't have her own security company just because it's a good business, you know. But at the end of the day, the reality is this: The high-speed railway will get built, obviously not on time or within budget, but at a pace and cost commensurate with the cultural and socio-political environment in which it is based. In the meantime, everyone has their roles to play in this melodrama. Ing must tell her employees and the public that the project is still on track while telling the government that it could fall apart at any minute. The banks must hold their breath until they get the sweetest deal. Foreign contractors must wave pieces of paper furiously in the air and warn of the dire consequences of missing deadlines and busting budgets, as if these things mean anything to the Taiwanese.

  Yep, until it actually gets up and running, the high-speed railway ought to make for a great show. Tune in at the end of the month to see how the Eurotrain people take it if the Japanese Shinkansen system is chosen over theirs, for reasons which will probably have very little to do with who builds the best trains.

  Anthony Lawrance is the managing editor of the Taipei Times
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