More than NT$700 million (US$25.06 million) is to be deducted from a payment to Marubeni Corp, after the Japanese firm failed to meet several criteria set in the contract for the electromechanical system of the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) line, the Railway Bureau said yesterday.
The bureau is verifying the work before giving final approval of the airport MRT line, which was launched in March 2017.
However, the contractor has not been able to meet three key criteria set in the contract: average operating speed, estimated travel time and train intervals, the bureau said.
Photo courtesy of Taoyuan Metro Corp
In February 2019, the bureau asked the Public Construction Commission to arbitrate its dispute with Marubeni.
“After Marubeni failed to meet its contractual obligations, we asked other companies for help, but none of them wanted to bid on an improvement project,” bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said.
Marubeni did not think it should be blamed for failing to address the issues, Yang added.
The bureau followed the commission’s recommendation to accept the airport MRT line at a reduced price and deducted NT$726.9 million from the payment to Marubeni, Yang said.
However, the Japanese contractor failed to respond to the commission’s recommendation before the deadline, so the dispute was not settled, Yang said.
“So far, we are sticking with the commission’s recommendation of reducing the payment when we accept the project,” Yang said. “If they do not accept the result of the arbitration and wish to fight this in court, we will respect their decision.”
Marubeni was contracted to build the electromechanical system for NT$25 billion, but has yet to be paid NT$1.1 billion.
The terms of the contract require that the line’s express train service travel from Taipei Railway Station to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport’s Terminal One in 35 minutes or less, whereas the existing travel time is 35:47 minutes to 36:59 minutes.
The contract requires an average speed of 60kph for an express train and 45kph for a regular train, but the express trains average 58.31kph to 56.46kph, while regular trains average 38.9kph to 39.57kph.
The trains are dispatched every 15 minutes, instead of every six minutes, but Marubeni has reportedly not tested if that was possible.
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