When former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Lin I-hsiung (林義雄) started his hunger strike in protest against the continued construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) on April 22 — Earth Day — he was doing it for future generations and for the Earth, calling on authorities to reflect upon what they were doing.
Another report that made it to the newspapers that day concerned the Taipei-Yilan direct rail line, a little-explained NT$50 billion (US$1.66 billion) project that was about to be constructed not far from Lin’s home.
First, who was responsible for this decision? A project of this scale has social, economic and environmental impacts and its cost-benefit analysis and the many follow-up procedures involved should never have been solely up to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ Railway Reconstruction Bureau.
The bureau’s used to be the Taipei Railway Underground Project Organization — an organization originally supposed to be temporary: Who would have guessed that more than 30 years later it would have turned into an unwieldy ATM, with the government giving out massive handouts to localities around the nation?
The officials in charge of the bureau are constantly tasked with providing new proposals to ensure those handouts keep on coming, so that the bureau can continue to justify its existence. Naturally, they were hoping that as the transit systems along the west coast gradually took shape and were completed, they could turn their attention to the east.
Second, what is the goal of this project? Is it to cut down on congestion in the Hsuehshan Tunnel (雪山隧道) on Freeway No. 5? To promote tourism? Or to increase passenger capacity? The bureau has told reporters that all of the above are true, a policy that will please many. Any questions were drowned out by the figures being bandied around. There was talk of NT$49.1 billion to construct a 53km stretch of line — together with a 26.1km tunnel — that is expected to take 11 years to finish.
Devising transportation routes is not like flood control: Straightening routes will not necessarily increase flow. Routes serve people and there are many considerations that need to be taken into account when deciding whether a proposed line should be adopted.
Railway passengers must have access to stations, so the route will be constrained by the location of settlement clusters. The more direct route, being faster, will no doubt benefit long-distance passengers, but passengers living along the original route will not necessarily benefit.
According to reports, the proposed line is to avoid major stations such as Keelung, Rueifang and Fulong, going direct to Toucheng from Nangang in Taipei, shaving 18 minutes of travel time for people from Taipei and passengers farther afield from Changhua or Hualien and Taitung down the east coast. That said, there will also be many residents of Keelung and Yilan left without a new service. If this line, cutting straight through with an emphasis on providing an express service, is meant primarily for long-distance passengers, fine, just do not make out that it is supposed to improve transportation between Taipei and Yilan for everyone.
Neither are railways like roads. One cannot apply concepts like ring roads fed by roads in spoke-like geometric formation, thinking that straight lines represent the optimal, fastest route. The success of mass public transportation depends upon the passengers that use the stations.
The construction of the route is infrastructure, whether the planners can change passenger behavior will depend on how competitive the train schedules and ticket prices are. The bureau cannot talk about how it is improving the rail service until it has a strategy in place. The close to NT$50 billion quoted for the construction of the proposed route is the tip of the iceberg of the total cost of operation.
The announcement of the proposed route was no place to reveal, to much fanfare, this new route as a major construction project, until the bureau can provide comprehensive cost and benefit projections.
Take, for example, the travel time of “only 47 minutes” that the engineers of the Taipei-Yilan route are so proud of. Travel by bus takes only 45 minutes, costs half the price and gives passengers five times the number of scheduled services to choose from.
The “direct” Taipei-Yilan line will not be competitive with such bus services for the sort of passengers who need to travel short distances.
What of weekends and holidays? Do we have to wait 12 years for the new line before the traffic congestion problem is solved? The most effective way of solving the congestion in the Hsuehshan Tunnel is to make people pay to use it, levying a congestion charge on the small coaches that are responsible for most traffic.
The metered toll collection system on freeways introduced by the government at the beginning of the year is an effective instrument and one perfectly suited to Freeway No. 5.
The government could give priority to public transportation, that would eradicate a large part of the problem. It might be hard to persuade people, but it would certainly make more economic sense than a tunnel. The government should first try the priority access idea and then, and only then, consider committing to a major construction project. This would sit better with expert opinion and with the environment, too.
The main reason so many flock to Yilan at the weekend is to escape the urban sprawl and the answer to this does not lie in spurious construction projects. The pace of life on the east coast, from Hualien to Taitung, is more laid back than on the west.
It is important that a trip to the east has that distinction. Cutting 18 minutes off the journey time is not the key to local prosperity. Is it really necessary to cut a tunnel of this length just for the sake of saving 18 minutes? A bit of prudence and caution would not go amiss.
Hochen Tan, a former chairman of Chunghwa Telecom, is chairman of the Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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