A joke going the rounds says that Taiwan is a
place of modern cities and spectacular scenery,
and there are plans to build a road to connect
the two sometime soon. In fact, more highways
are being built to ease traffic, but safety and
convenience issues still cause concern.
What should have been a pleasant three-hour drive for Peng Ho-ming and her family one holiday weekend last year turned into a six-hour nightmare. The traffic from her home in Taipei City to a resort in northern Taiwan was more like a parking lot than a freeway. "Never again," Peng now says about driving anywhere on a holiday. "I'd rather stay at home watching TV or sleeping."
Peng's experience is not unusual. Many people in Taiwan today feel powerless at the thought of traveling by car on weekends and holidays, particularly during the Lunar New Year. Such feelings are justified. According to a report released in 2000 by the Highway Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), at the end of 1998 the total length of highways and roads in the ROC amounted to 34,901 kilometers. This means 1.6 kilometers of road for every thousand people on the island, compared with 1.83 in South Korea, 9.22 in Japan, and 24.08 in the United States.
Meanwhile, the number of vehicles on the island's roads continues to grow at frightening speed. Between 1994 and 1999, vehicle ownership increased by 5.6 percent annually. By the end of 1999, it had reached 16 million motor vehicles, 11 million of them motorcycles, or 728 vehicles for every thousand people. Density is much lower in South Korea, which has 211 motor vehicles for every thousand people, and Japan with 670, but is slightly higher in the United States with 778.
A high population density and strong purchasing power have contributed to the island's woeful traffic conditions. Anticipating growing problems, the MOTC established the Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau in 1970 and began construction of the 373-kilometer Sun Yat-sen Freeway. Also known as the North-South Freeway, Taiwan's first national freeway opened in 1978, connecting Kaohsiung in the south with Taipei in the north. One of the Ten Major Construction Projects of the 1970s, it has played an important role in improving Taiwan's traffic, as well as stimulating the economy.
To further lighten the burden on the northern part of the island, in 1987 the MOTC began construction of the Second Freeway, which parallels the Sun Yat-sen Freeway. The northern section is 117 kilometers long and begins in Taipei County's Hsichih, from where it runs south to the Hsinchu area, the site of the island's main science-based industrial park. Traffic was introduced to this section in three stages, and it was not completely opened until August 1997. Three years later the southern section between Hsinhua in Tainan County and Pingtung was put into service, and the MOTC estimates that by the end of 2002 the central section, connecting Hsinchu and Hsinhua, will be completed, thus bringing the entire 505-kilometer project to a triumphant conclusion. Work on the Western Coastal Expressway connecting Pali township in Taipei County and Tainan City in the southwest is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2003, and most sections of the road have already been opened to traffic.
These three arteries--the Sun Yat-sen Freeway, the Second Freeway, and the Western Coastal Expressway--are the is land's traffic backbones. But more needs to be done to fully develop their usefulness in easing traffic flow. "Taiwan used to put emphasis on the construction of north-south thoroughfares. Now it's time to connect them with east-west highways," says Yang Chin-tse, deputy chief engineer of the Highway Bureau. Since 1995 the government has begun work on twelve east-west expressways, and most of them should be completed by 2003. Ten of the twelve will link the three major north-south arteries, and Yang adds that on average there will be one such expressway every thirty kilometers along the north-south freeways. Drivers will then be able to skirt congestion by switching from one north-south thoroughfare to another. These east-west roads also give drivers from the coast quicker access to inland destinations.
Taiwan is additionally considering building highways connecting inland urban areas and the stations for the planned high-speed railway project. Fast trains will link Taipei and Kaohsiung, but they will run primarily through the suburbs rather than downtown areas. "Highways shouldn't be a closed system. They must be conveniently connected to the traffic nodes where different means of transportation meet, such as the high-speed-rail stations," says Lawrence W. Lan, director of National Chiao Tung University's Institute of Traffic and Transportation. "We need to enhance the integration of transportation. So connecting highways must be constructed, otherwise those railway stations will be nothing but isolated islands."
In view of Taiwan's population density and rate of car ownership, it clearly needs to build more roads. But since the total length of roads and highways has grown by an average of 880 kilometers a year over the past five years, Lan believes there must be less costly alternative solutions. "The supply of roads will never meet the demand," he notes. "Just look at the United States where you can be stuck in a sea of cars on an eight-lane highway during rush hour." The more roads you build, the more cars manufacturers build to clog them, in other words.
He asserts that the best way to improve traffic flow is to use existing facilities with greater efficiency, citing the High Occupancy Vehicle Control as an example. Traffic controls were first implemented in 1995 over a holiday period, whereby only vehicles carrying four or more occupants including the driver were permitted on the freeway during peak hours. Temporal distribution is another possibility. "With the development of advanced technologies, more and more people may be able to work from home or complete tasks without leaving their offices, or conduct long-distance education," Lan notes.
As early as 1992 the Taipei City Government, led by then Mayor Huang Ta-chou, began to experiment with more efficient use of existing roads. Two bus-only lanes were opened that year, and that number has since grown to ten. According to Chen Jung-ming, superintendent of the city's Transportation Planning Laboratory, more bus lanes are planned.
Taipei's traffic is without a doubt busier than any other urban area on the island, but the convenience of its public transportation is equally impressive, particularly since the mass rapid transit ( MRT) systems began operating in 1996. The city's public bus system is also extensive. Both the number of public buses and the total length of the routes they travel account for more than one-fourth of all those on the island, Chen notes. Few visitors to the island's principal city would deny that traffic has gotten better in the last few years, but more improvements can be made. The city is planning to increase service frequency by shortening routes to an optimum ten kilometers, and revise routings so that buses can transport passengers to MRT stations. Buses traveling to the city from around the island will no longer all terminate at the Taipei Railway Station, thus reducing congestion. Within the next six years, five main bus terminals will be established throughout the city with only one in the current downtown area.
Changes in the recruitment of drivers have also helped. In the past, only those with experience of driving trucks were permitted to take the test for a bus driver's license. Because of this limitation, bus companies were reluctant to fire drivers with poor performance records, as there were so few qualified replacements available. After the restriction was revised in 1999, anyone with at least two years of driving experience could take the test, which led to an improvement in the quality of drivers. The public was encouraged to ask them to be polite and obey the traffic rules, and in August 1999 the Taipei City Government imposed a maximum speed limit of forty kilometers per hour on city buses.
Intercity bus service has also recently improved, largely due to increased competition. Previously islanders had no choice but to take state-operated Taiwan Motor Transport Corp. buses when traveling between cities on national freeways. But in 1989 Taiwan's first private bus company was given permission to operate on freeways, and a growing number of competitors have entered the market since 1995, in which year the MOTC established a committee to assess intercity buses. "We evaluate their services, and those that perform well are given priority when we issue freeway operating licenses," notes National Chiao Tung University's Lawrence Lan, a member of the committee. Today, more than twenty private companies serve the island's national freeways.
An evaluation committee for buses running on provincial highways has also been established. One of its main tasks is to allocate subsidies to bus companies operating on provincial highways in remote areas. This year, due to budgetary constraints, the subsidy totaled NT$300 million (US$9.3 million), less than half that of any of the previous five years.
Although Taiwan Motor Transport has seen a dramatic downturn in business since the liberalization of licensing, it is still the largest company operating on the island's national freeways. There were 3,100 employees on the payroll as of April this year, down from 15,000 in 1990, and its fleet has shrunk from 3,000 to 1,200 during the same period. Annual revenue has dropped from NT$10 billion (US$370 million, at the 1990 exchange rate) ten years ago to NT$3 billion (US$91 million) in 2000. In addition, the company's annual deficit averaged NT$6.4 billion (US$194 million) between 1993 and 1999.
Fierce competition has had negative effects on profits, but inefficiency has also taken a toll. "In the past, the entire workload could have been handled by just 70 percent of the workforce," says Lee Hong-sen, deputy president of the bus company. Salary cuts are foreseeable when the company is privatized, which is due to happen any day. "Of course most employees aren't happy about privatization, but if we don't go in this direction the company will continue to lose money, and our losses are the taxpayers' burden."
The privatization of the former giant will certainly add an edge to the industry and should motivate other bus companies to improve their services. Taiwan Motor Transport has already pared down its operations by releasing thirty-eight of its licensed routes, nine of them freeway routes, to other companies.
A lack of freeways will continue to plague Taiwan drivers in the near future. For example, budgetary shortages are holding up construction of the proposed highway along the island's eastern coast between Hualien and Taitung. The government is trying to contract the project on a build-operate-transfer basis, but commercial interest in this relatively quiet part of the island has been low, notes the Highway Bureau's Yang Chin-tse. No schedules have been set for a couple of east-west expressways connecting the north-south thoroughfares, also partly due to lack of funds.
Reconstruction work on the Central Cross-Island Highway, which was seriously damaged by the September 1999 earthquake, is expected to be costly. The Highway Bureau has priced the repairs at over NT$10 billion (US$303 million) and estimates that completion could take more than ten years because a twenty-five-kilometer section was totally destroyed. As the government assesses the necessity for full-scale restoration, it has completed patchwork repairs for local residents who commute.
Highway safety is at times worsened by the demands of the public, Lawrence Lan notes. "There are too many openings in the concrete traffic dividers on highways, especially on provincial highways," he says. "Nearby residents demand openings so they can turn into traffic flow at regular intervals, but that's where the most serious accidents take place. The openings are usually sealed after an accident, but this doesn't make local residents happy."
Another example of a lack of prescience is the number and disorganization of the island's utility lines. To date, nearly all of them--there are eight categories, including electricity, gas, and water--run underground, which has a negative influence on traffic and the appearance of roads, Yang Chin-tse notes, because the lines must be dug up whenever there is maintenance work. Fortunately, last year the Common Utilities Channel law was passed, mandating construction of a common channel for all utilities at the start of any major national construction project. A common channel must be large enough for workers to access different lines and repair them without digging up the road.
"Overloaded trucks have done plenty of damage to the highways, too," Yang adds. "It's not a problem on the freeways, where there are weigh stations near toll booths, but it's impossible to set up enough stations along the remainder of the island's roads." Generally, drivers are still not serious about traffic rules. "Especially in southern Taiwan, where traffic lights don't mean a lot to locals," notes Chen Jung-ming of the Taipei City Government's Transportation Planning Laboratory.
But there is some good news on the horizon. According to the Highway Bureau, the government is determined to make Taiwan's highways more green. It has budgeted NT$300 million (US$9.1 million) toward the goal, up from NT$50 million (US$ 1.5 million) about five years ago. The bureau will establish a special section later this year to oversee the project.
The quality of Taiwan's roads by and large meets international standards. There are some stretches, such as those along the island's rugged east coast, that feature breathtaking scenery. And driving through the lush green mountains can easily make a visitor forget the polluted busy streets of the industrialized cities. But the image of bumper-to-bumper traffic continues to haunt the island's drivers. Taiwan's roads and highways have seen some dramatic improvements in recent years, though, and if the process continues, perhaps jaded would-be tourists like Peng Ho-ming will one day venture out of the city again, even on a holiday weekend.