On Tuesday, the Suhua Highway improvement project won conditional, though unanimous, approval from the Environmental Protection Administration’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) committee. As a result, the Hualien County residents who came all the way to Taipei to stage a protest will likely get the “safe road home” they wanted. After years of controversy, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ Directorate General of Highways will be able to launch the project because of the social pressure following recent landslides that resulted in a serious bus accident. But then what?
After expressing their anger and exhaustion, Hualien residents should now be able to calmly evaluate the project. Will it really bring prosperity to the county and reverse the disadvantages of living in remote areas? While the Suhua Highway remains closed following the landslide, with travel by train the only option, perhaps we could examine the insufficient public transit system and try to incorporate relatively cheap railroad transport into our daily lives. Also, during the six-year construction period, construction vehicles and the already dense flow of gravel trucks will further consume capacity on this single east coast road. Bearing this in mind, as well as the high risk of temporary closures because of heavy rain and earthquakes, people should perhaps get used to using the railroad to travel safely.
It is probably a bittersweet victory for the directorate general, which, after offering many guarantees, is now facing the great challenge of completing the alternative highway not only in a fragile environment, but also ahead of schedule. It’s unlikely the EIA committee is receiving satisfactory answers to its 46 questions on the project. The committee members are simply passing responsibility for insufficient information and analysis to the developer. The officials only care about launching the project as soon as possible, rather than its completion, and they are passing difficulties such as insufficient preparation and complex construction sites on to the engineering units.
As for the Taiwanese media, they repeatedly air footage of the landslides, victims' families crying for help and protests by Hualien residents to increase the moral pressure on the engineers. There is no one to help them with all the current problems or all the new problems that may occur over the next six years. They have been left on their own with all responsibility for constructing a safe road. So please consider the following questions while waiting for the project to begin:
First, with this speedy EIA process, has all the material been sufficiently analyzed? Is everyone confident that the whole 40km road can be dug up and traffic can remain smooth in the face of a deteriorating climate?
Second, will it be possible to reroute the flow of gravel trucks during the construction period to diminish work hazards and guarantee the safety of everyone on the road? Should gravel transport be rerouted to railroads? Should that be set as a precondition before beginning construction?
Third, if we assume that directing gravel transport to rail is successful and that the production of gravel goes down, will it still be necessary to allow trailers to enter long tunnels? Do we still need to use the current design of an extra-wide 7.8m road? Should we reduce the width to reduce the amount of construction and thus the negative impact on the environment?
It is said the highway will become a better and upgraded scenic route. From a long-term perspective, it will be neither easy nor cheap to maintain both the scenery and the safety of the highway. The related costs and schedule should be clearly explained in the current plan.
We may have helped the government and opposition parties get an early start on construction, but the question is how to guarantee that the Suhua Highway will really be safe.
We need a monitoring mechanism in particular, since neither the ministry nor the directorate general have corrected politicians over the past two years who have misled the public by claiming that 1,046 people died on that road between 1997 and 2008, when the real figure is 53.
There is reason to demand the establishment of a construction monitoring system that is not controlled by the developer. Also, expertise must be adhered to and the environment must be respected so we get a road that is safe for everyone.
Hochen Tan is chairman of the Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG AND PERRY Svensson
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