A road project serving the Taiwan High Speed Rail’s Huwei Station in Yunlin County has been called off because of safety concerns, the Directorate-General of Highways said yesterday.
Three roads linking the high-speed rail station with surrounding areas had been designed and preparations had been made to break ground, but a recent report on land subsidence caught the attention of the planners.
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) commissioned the Industrial Technology Research Institute to monitor geological changes along the railway between Changhua and Greater Kaohsiung.
Its latest report shows that last year, Huwei Station — a new station — and its vicinity had sunk 5.7cm, compared with 4.8cm the previous year. Subsidence in other places in Yunlin County ranged from 5.7cm to 6.8cm along Provincial Highway No. 78 and County Highway No. 158, the report said.
The safety concerns prompted the directorate to suspend the building of the three roads and the funding has been returned to the THSRC. Although the differential settlement along Provincial Highway No. 78 — 1.19/1,500 — was within the legal limit of 4.5/1,500, the directorate said it would keep reminding the THSRC of the danger.
The THSRC said it would not wait until the differential settlement reaches a dangerous level, but would start strengthening the railway base as soon as the figure reaches 2-3/1,500, to ensure safety.
However, some academics have said this so-called safety value does not ensure safety, as a recent landslide on Freeway No. 3 showed.
Textbook theory says a massive landslide will occur only when a layer of land slides more than 25o. However, the freeway landslide took place on a sunny day when the geological layer slid only 16o, said Chen Hung-yu (陳宏宇), a professor at National Taiwan University.
He also cited the case of Vaiont Dam in Italy. The dam, built in 1960, was thought to be safe, even though slopes behind it were found to be shifting. On a clear evening in 1963, massive landslides caused the dam to overflow and flood nearby towns, killing more than 2,500 people.
“This is proof that the existing scientific theory is always being challenged,” Chen said.
He said land subsidence in Yunlin was not a geological issue, but a result of the excessive pumping of underground water, a problem that has not been resolved.
The Bureau of High Speed Rail has admitted that excessive pumping of underground water was the main cause for the subsidence in the area.
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