The government should consider standardizing all the nation’s railways to standard-gauge tracks, because doing so could enhance the economic efficiency of all train services, former Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) director-general Dong Ping (董萍) said yesterday.
Dong made the remarks as he received a lifetime achievement award from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications for building underground railroads in the 1980s and planning the construction of the high-speed rail network.
Dong said that the high-speed rail system uses the standard gauge system, which means that its tracks are 14.35m wide. However, the TRA’s tracks are 10.67m wide, which makes it a narrow gauge railway.
Upgrading the TRA’s tracks to standard gauge would increase the railway system’s economic efficiency in the next 10 to 20 years, he said.
“The upgrade would mean that the speed of TRA trains could be increased from 120kph to 200kph. This would see passenger volume rise as well,” he said.
Dong said that only 20 percent of train lines around the world use narrow gauge tracks, compared with the 60 percent that employ a standard gauge system.
He said that because the TRA can only buy trains from countries that use the same track width, it has a limited selection, meaning that what it purchases is not always the most cost-efficient, nor of the highest quality.
If both the high-speed rail and the TRA used standard gauge tracks, the administration’s trains could operate on the high-speed rail network, Dong said. This would give Taiwan an around-the-island high-speed train service, he added.
At the ceremony, Dong also spoke of his time in charge of the TRA.
He said that building the underground railway had been a huge challenged. At the time, there were about 200 trains operating in downtown Taipei a day, with 13 railway crossings along the routes.
“The biggest challenge was that none of these train services could be suspended while the underground rail was being built,” he said. “Many people also worried that the project would cause the Taipei basin to sink further due to the potential loss of a massive amount of ground water.”
“Meanwhile, none of the government agencies involved in the project were willing to finance it, including those in the Taipei City Government, the former Taiwan provincial government and the central government.”
Dong said the project was able to progress because of then-premier Sun Yun-suan (孫運璿), who vowed to take full responsibility for its success or failure.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
Ferry operators are planning to provide a total of 1,429 journeys between Taiwan proper and its offshore islands to meet increased travel demand during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, the Maritime and Port Bureau said yesterday. The available number of ferry journeys on eight routes from Saturday next week to Feb. 2 is expected to meet a maximum transport capacity of 289,414 passengers, the bureau said in a news release. Meanwhile, a total of 396 journeys on the "small three links," which are direct ferries connecting Taiwan's Kinmen and Lienchiang counties with China's Fujian Province, are also being planned to accommodate
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) yesterday authorized the execution of convicted murderer Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), the first death row prisoner to be put to death since President William Lai (賴清德) took office. Huang was to be executed via a firing squad yesterday evening, which would leave Taiwan with 36 convicts on death row. Huang on Oct. 1, 2013, broke into his ex-girlfriend Wang Ping-chih’s (王品智) residence in New Taipei City, where he raped and murdered Wang. He also killed Wang’s mother. Huang was bitter over the breakup and her accusation that he had stolen NT$200,000 (US$6,074) from her bank account, prosecutors said
RSS