Rail travel in Taiwan is cheaper than going by air,
and the island's trains have a reputation for being fast,
comfortable, and convenient. Many frequent fliers are
expected to defect to the high-speed rail connection
between Taipei and Kaohsiung once it is built.
So why is the outlook for trains not rosier?
"Memory is as long as a railroad track," wrote Taiwan's distinguished poet Yu Kwang-chung, recalling childhood excursions by train. The island's "memory" extends for about 1,100 kilometers in all, equivalent to 50 kilometers of track per million people, or 300 kilometers per 10,000 square kilometers of land. It is a heavily loaded memory, too: in 1999, the railway system carried 182 million passengers and 16.7 million tonnes of freight, or half a million people and 45,000 tonnes of goods every day of the year.
The rail system dates back to the late Ching dynasty, more than a century ago, although it was not until 1992 that the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) completed the Southern Link connecting Taitung on the east coast with Kaohsiung on the west, thus creating a round-the-island network. Before the inauguration of the North-South Freeway in 1978, trains dominated the domestic transportation scene, accounting for more than 40 percent of fares and freights. Access to the new freeway dramatically reduced that to about 10 percent. In recent years, however, worsening traffic congestion has sent many travelers back to the railroad, although the door-to-door convenience offered by highway haulage companies ensures their continuing dominance in the domestic freight market.
This largely corresponds with worldwide trends. "Railways are playing a crucial role in the development of mass transportation systems," says Yeh Ming-shan, professor of transportation engineering and management at Feng Chia University in central Taiwan's Taichung City. "In comparison with the highways they are safer, more comfortable, more energy-efficient, and less polluting. They can also offer far greater capacity."
Yeh points out that building more highways merely encourages people to buy cars, thus making road conditions even worse, and most modern dynamic societies are coming around to this way of thinking. Tokyo, for example, is at the hub of more than thirty railroad routes. "A well-established rail network does more than anything else to keep such a formidable metropolis in shape," Yeh says. "If its railway system failed, it would become a dead city."
Liao Ching-lung, director-general of the Bureau of Taiwan High Speed Rail (BOTHSR) responsible to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), notes that all effective rail systems are regulated by a central administration, which permits the development of reliable scheduling. "Train drivers are only responsible for a train's speed, not its direction," he says. "This is a relatively simple means of transportation to operate." And if railways are already offering a better means of mass transportation than highways, the projected high-speed rail (HSR) service between Taipei and the southern port city of Kaohsiung will seriously threaten one of the island's most profitable air routes.
The crucial point is that Taiwan, with less than 400 kilometers separating any two points, is a fairly small place. "Within that distance, air travel will be more time-consuming than the high-speed train, given the time and effort needed to get to and from the airport," Liao explains. "The HSR will be like an airplane on land--except that passengers won't be required to fasten their seatbelts or turn off their mobile phones." Moreover, airlines can provide only limited capacity and they are restricted to transporting passengers between A and B, in contrast to railways, which serve many destinations along any given line and have huge carrying capacity.
The projected 345-kilometer HSR system connecting Taipei and Kaohsiung will be the first major infrastructure project in Taiwan to be undertaken by the private sector on the build-operate-transfer model. About three-quarters of the overall construction costs, which include the money for ten stations, will come from private investors. The government has also allocated funds for the construction of roads connecting the new stations to neighboring downtown areas. The BOTHSR's Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Group is responsible for designing new MRT systems in Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, and Tainan that will be integrated with the HSR system, which is slated for completion in October 2005. Once it is operational, travel between the island's two largest cities will take less than ninety minutes, a huge departure from the current four and a half hours by road or rail.
The culmination of all this development is expected to be "three railways in one," an integrated transportation system in which the HSR, local MRTs, and the TRA will all have clearly defined roles to play. "The essence of the MOTC's policy is the promotion of mass transportation," says Joe Y. Chou, railway section chief at the ministry's Department of Railways and Highways. "And that goal can't be achieved without healthy railway development." He points out that after the completion of the HSR system, the market for rail transport will be threefold: long-, medium-, and short-distance journeys serviced by the HSR, the TRA, and MRT systems respectively. Where does the TRA fit into this scheme of things? "The TRA will keep part of its current intercity function and develop its commuter role," Chou explains.
Yang Han-sheng has no doubt but that this is the way to go. He manages the Railway Engineering Department of China Engineering Consultants, Inc., a nonprofit advisory organization set up by the MOTC and the Taipei City Government in 1969. "The TRA's existing system hasn't a hope of competing with the HSR over long-distance routes, so it's going to have to refocus on medium-length journeys," he says. "It's become a global trend for railways to integrate with MRT systems." In practice, this means that the TRA will have to build additional stations and run trains more frequently, while having regard to the interests of other means of transportation. Main stations like Kaohsiung and Taipei will quickly become combined HSR, MRT, and TRA hubs, with TRA lines being relocated underground in urban areas wherever possible. The new Panchiao Station in Taipei County is a sign of things to come. "It integrates the three railway systems, bus services, taxis, and parking for private cars," says Feng Chia University's Yeh Ming-shan, who helped design it.
Apart from integration, the MOTC is also focusing on ways of eliminating the number of grade crossings and reducing noise pollution in the Taipei area. In the first two phases of the Taipei Railway Underground Project, TRA tracks in downtown Taipei were buried beneath the streets to coincide with completion of the new main-line station. Work on the third phase is ongoing and not expected to be completed until next year. The final stage, the Nankang Extension Project, which is designed to dovetail with the development of a new Nankang Economic and Trade Park, began in 1998 and is scheduled for completion by the end of 2010. Similar projects are also being planned for other major cities such as Kaohsiung, Taichung, and Tainan.
Yang Han-sheng, who is helping design the Nankang project, believes that this development has been deferred for far too long. "Removing grade crossings is the first priority when you're constructing an MRT-style TRA system," he says. "The TRA should have done it thirty years ago, instead of focusing on electrification."
Another major project involves upgrading the east-coast railway system with a view to industrializing the eastern part of the island and balancing urban with rural development. Responsibility for this operation lies with the Engineering Office of the MOTC's Taipei Railway Underground Project, which was established in 1983 to supervise the burying of tracks in the Taipei area. (This seemingly rather odd assignment of responsibility--Taipei is a long way from the east coast--is the result of the downsizing of the Taiwan Provincial Government, which resulted in a number of administrative anomalies.)
The east-coast plan focuses on a stretch of railway 337 kilometers long in three sections: the Ilan line, which runs from the port of Keelung in the northeast to Suao, a distance of ninety-five kilometers; the North Link line, an eighty-kilometer single-track stretch between Suao and Hualien; and the Hualien-Taitung line. The improvements, scheduled for completion in 2003, include further electrification, replacement of single lines with double tracks, upgrading of track using "heavy" rails, the creation of a centralized control system, purchase of new locomotives, construction of repair facilities, and the relocation of depots.
But however much the TRA would like to upgrade itself, there are a number of problems to be resolved first. For one thing, according to a report published earlier this year in response to an investigation by Taiwan's ombudsman organization, the Control Yuan, more than 80 percent of the TRA's gross profits are paid out annually to employees and pensioners. In recent years, the administration has run at an average annual loss of NT$10 billion (US$303 million). And this is going to get worse, because an estimated 75 percent of its profits come from long-distance passengers who are likely to defect to the HSR once it is up and running. So the TRA needs to find other sources of income, quickly.
Safety is another major concern. Many of existing facilities are dangerously antiquated. Most key equipment comes from abroad, which increases the cost of purchasing replacements. Moreover, different officials bought from different sources at various times, making life even more difficult for those who would like to impose a centralized standard maintenance program.
Yeh Ming-shan highlights yet a further problem. "The TRA is a closed system," he says. "It's exclusively self-regulated. There is no objective outsider to monitor its operations." Moreover, responsibility for Taiwan's railways is shared between too many organizations: the MOTC's railway section, the BOTHSR, the TRA, and the Council for Economic Planning and Development. Yeh therefore suggests the creation of a single agency to supervise the railways at national level, with power to make policy, inspect facilities and operations, and investigate accidents--of which lately there have been far too many, some of them fatal.
Under Yeh Ming-shan's plan, the existing Engineering Office of the MOTC's Taipei Railway Underground Project would be renamed the Railway Construction Engineering Office and take over all construction work, leaving commercial operations as the responsibility of a restructured TRA. "At the very least, there ought to be an independent department of railway affairs within the MOTC," he argues.
As presently constituted, however, the TRA is responsible for both construction work and day-to-day operations. "Did you ever hear of car drivers being given responsibility for road maintenance?" sniffs railway engineer Yang Han-sheng. He proposes the privatization of the TRA, perhaps financed by mutual funds. Something along these lines may well happen: last year the TRA itself put forward a restructuring proposal that would transform it into a commercial entity. The MOTC is also known to be considering revisions to laws that govern development and disposal of the TRA's valuable real estate holdings and limit its ability to engage in other, more profitable businesses such as telecommunications, tourism, and property development.
Another project favored by Yeh Ming-shan is the development of a domestic railway parts manufacturing industry. "We still produce our own cars," he points out. "If such a business could be made profitable, given the expanding market here, it would make no sense to buy all our rail equipment from abroad." He notes that state-owned China Steel Corp. is participating in the Kaohsiung MRT project, where it is expected to make a significant contribution through the manufacture of cars and rails. A further encouraging sign is that last January the Cabinet set up a railway industry development group, with an initial brief to promote the construction and operation of light-rail systems.
Unfortunately, all this takes not just money, but also skills, and "few of my students show any enthusiasm for entering the railway business," says Yeh, who has taught transportation at university level for ten years. All he can do is hope that, if the rail industry shows sign of prospering, it will attract and keep more talent.
The case for some kind of central coordinating agency with responsibility for railway affairs seems overwhelming, and perhaps one of the first things it might do is consider the disparities between Taipei and the rest of Taiwan--a disparity that is as manifest in transport matters as it is in so many other aspects of life. Irene Yeung commutes by rail between Taoyuan County and downtown Taipei. "I feel like I'm going up when I leave Taoyuan for Taipei in the morning, and down when I leave my office and head back home," she says, alluding to a campaign slogan coined by Academia Sinica head Lee Yuan-tse prior to last year's presidential election, when the Democratic Progressive Party promised to "lead Taiwan upward."
Yeung points out that, unlike Taipei, her hometown does not have the benefit of regular, frequent buses connecting the railway station with outlying areas. "The best business to be in around Taoyuan Station is providing parking for commuters' motorcycles and bikes," she says. For herself, all she wants to do is remain on a level gradient, whether traveling "up" to Taipei or "down" to Taoyuan. Until things change, however, she and thousands of people like her can only offer thanks that at least they are close to the hub of Taiwan's railway universe.