Minister of Transportation and Communications Tsai Duei (
"I think this is a misunderstanding," Tsai said. "We said in our assessment report that the railway transportation system along the East Coast would exceed its carrying capacity in the next 20 years. We cannot wait until then to plan for the construction of the Suhua Freeway, which will take at least 10 years to build."
Tsai said yesterday that the Executive Yuan had asked his ministry to re-perform its environmental variation analyses for the construction that were conducted last year. The analyses have been completed and were submitted to the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) for review last week.
After incorporating the evaluations from the EPA, the entire project would still have to be approved by the Executive Yuan, he said.
The assessment report would present three possible policy directions for transportation on the East Coast, including maintaining the status quo, or developing the region's industries and expanding the capacity of its transportation network, Tsai said.
The latter proposal, once it was adopted, would enable the construction of the Suhua Freeway to proceed as planned, he said.
However, before settling on a final direction, the ministry would continue to strengthen the functions of the existing transportation systems, including electrifying the North Link Railway System, expanding the infrastructure of airports in Hualien and Taitung, increasing the number of short-distance commuter trains along the east coast and improving the road conditions on Provincial Highway No. 9, Tsai said.
Liu Chug-chun (劉佳鈞), the deputy director of the EPA's planning division, said the administration was legally bound to submit the review within 50 days.
However, the processing might take longer if the ministry were asked to turn in supplementary information, he said.
Tsai made his remarks following a report published yesterday in the Chinese-language China Times, which said the Suhua Freeway would not be built within 20 years.
According to the story, the ministry indicated that unless the nation's industries relocate to the East Coast on a large scale, it was unnecessary to build the freeway. Nor was it necessary to build a straight-line railway connecting Taipei County with Ilan County, the newspaper said.
The Suhua Freeway was one of the Ten New Infrastructure Projects the Executive Yuan announced in 2003. The project was temporarily suspended by former premier Yu Shyi-kun on the grounds that the government needed to listen more to -- and respect -- the opinions of local residents.
The Suhua Freeway's construction plans conditionally passed an EPA environmental impact assessment in 2000. The project, however, was then postponed for more than three years. The transportation ministry was then required by law to turn in environmental variation analyses on the route, which failed to pass the EPA's review four times.
Last year, environmental protection advocates requested that the government conduct a more comprehensive evaluation of all the transportation systems on the East Coast to determine whether building the freeway was necessary.
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