To help meet the domestic travel demands of the next century, Taiwan is building a US$13.55 billion, 354-km high speed railway, scheduled to be completed in 1998. The railway will extend from Taipei in the north to Kaohsiung in the south. It will have trains capable of a maximum speed of 350 km per hour, among the fastest of the world's high speed trains. The demand for the railway has been stimulated by the island's sustained economic expansion and the rapid growth of domestic tourism, especially along the western coast. It is here, along the West Taiwan Corridor, where the high-speed railway (HSR) will be built.
According to a feasibility study commissioned by the Ministry of Communications and conducted by a German American consulting consortium, the western corridor already suffers from inadequate transportation facilities. The area's transportation system, which includes a conventional railway line, an existing (and overloaded) freeway, and another freeway under construction, will be unable to meet the travel demands between the northern and southern ends of the island beyond the year 2000. Projected demand for the HSR line for the target year of 2011 is 200,000 passenger trips per day.
A mountain alignment for the line saves on land costs and urban disruption, but it drives up the cost of construction.
The HSR was selected because it is the fastest way to transport commuters and is thus the best means to reduce road traffic congestion, it is more energy efficient, and it is an especially pleasant and comfortable way to travel. A further plus: as an advanced transportation technology, the HSR will be good for the island's image as a modernizing society.
The building of any new transport system in Taiwan must take into consideration complex environmental issues. This is especially true in the western corridor. Its narrow land space already has a high concentration of transport networks and one of the world's highest population densities. A high-speed railway is considered to be the least intrusive of all land transport systems, according to Michel Perocheau, project manager of SOFRERAIL, a French consulting firm and the general consultant to the Communications Ministry's Provisional Office for the High Speed Railway (POHSR).
SOFRERAIL was commissioned to conduct in one year (beginning October 1990) the preliminary engineering studies for the HSR line in conjunction with the China Engineering Consultants Inc. and several other local engineering groups. The French firm has forty engineers and other experts working here on various aspects of the project. Several railway specialists from Japan and Ger many are also working on the project as special consultants.
Relief scheduled for 1998 - the existing conventional railway is already overloaded and too slow for intensive commuter use.
According to Perocheau, up to 80 percent of the HSR line will be elevated to minimize taking land away from agricultural uses and disrupting urban areas. As a result, the HSR project has chosen a mountain line over alternative alignments through the center of the western corridor and along the coast.
Although it bypasses the densest built-up areas, the mountain alignment will still serve eight stations between Taipei and Kaohsiung, with approximately 75 percent of Taiwan's current 20 million population within 10 kilometers of a station. Perocheau says eight stations is the maximum allowable if a high-speed system is to be retained. Additional stations along the route would severely decrease savings in trip time. According to the feasibility study, five minutes off the trip from one end of the rail line to the other would add roughly 5 million riders per year to the system.
The Taiwan HSR system will use steel wheel-on-rail technology, not the experimental magnetic levitation system, which is still being developed in Germany and Japan. The former technology is already a mature system proven reliable for over twenty-five years in Japan and ten years in France. In fact, a slightly modified system of France's wheel-on-rail system (called the TGV) reached the world record speed of 515.3 km per hour in May 1990. Since Taiwan has already begun working on its high-speed rail system, the steel wheel-on-rail technology is the only choice. The adoption of the magnetic levitation system would mean delaying implementation until the system demonstrated its commercial viability.
Although the government has decided to adopt the steel wheel-on-rail system, it will not purchase an existing high-speed train from France, Japan, or Germany (the latter is scheduled to inaugurate its high-speed train in June 1991). Instead, the Communications Ministry wants Taiwan's high-speed rail to combine the features of the systems used in the three countries. In terms of speed, France leads both Japan and Germany. France's TGV holds a top commercial operating speed of 300 km per hour, while Japan's Shinkansen (bullet trains) run only 275 km per hour and Germany's ICE is designed to run an even slower 250 km per hour.
For the Taiwan HSR, the preparatory office has set these requirements: relatively higher capacity, the same coach floor and platform height, and very high speed. This means that the HSR system will initially have a capacity of 600 to 800 passengers per train (with four seats abreast) and a commercial operating speed of 300 km per hour. To meet future passenger growth, the system can be expanded to carry some 1,200 passengers per train and run up to 350 km per hour. Such an expansion in both capacity and speed would be able to meet the expected passenger capacity of the year 2020 and beyond.
According to the government's schedule, trains will be operating between Taipei and Taichung, the midpoint of the rail line, starting in 1996. By 1998, when the system is in full operation, some fifty trains will be carrying 50 million passengers a year. The initial schedule calls for a peak of seven trains per hour per direction. By 2011, when passenger load will have grown by 45 percent to reach approximately 77 million per year, ten trains will be needed per hour per direction. A further 20 percent capacity increase, achievable by increasing seating and adding trains during peak hours, will be needed in the following decade.
With the aid of the French general consultant and the China Engineering Consultants Inc., POHSR is currently preparing documents for tender. Local and foreign companies will be invited to submit tenders for design, civil construction, and supplying high-speed trains and equipment. According to Perocheau, the vast majority of the design work for the HSR will be done by joint venture local and foreign companies.
As for civil construction, which will include the building of viaducts, tunnels, stations, and maintenance yards, foreign firms are expected to play a key role, equaling 20 percent of total expenditure on civil construction. Spending on civil construction is expected to account for 85 percent of the total capital cost of the HSR project, while the remaining 15 per cent will go for purchasing the high-speed system itself. As much as 80 percent of equipment spending may go to foreign suppliers for trains, tracks, signals, and power supply. In all, nearly US$3.9 billion of the estimated capital cost of US$13.55 billion for the HSR system could go to pay foreign firms for products and services.
The HSR project has thus far been undertaken as a public-sector investment program, with all funds coming from the state treasury. It is most likely that the central government will also be the investor and operator of the high-speed railway. According to the financial evaluation in the feasibility study, private in vestment and ownership is not a viable option. The reason is simple. The project requires a tremendous amount of investment, and returns would only be realized when the system is in full operation. Additionally, payments of debt service, as well as operations and maintenance costs, will leave no profit in the early years of operation. This scenario will not be especially attractive to investors from the private sector. Therefore, the feasibility study has proposed public ownership and management as the only option for the HSR railway.
POHSR and other government authorities are still in the midst of preparing concrete funding plans for the HSR project. Yet the proposed railway has already been included in the ROC's recently launched Six-Year National Development Plan, which calls for the government to invest some US$300 billion in building the island's infrastructure and other public-sector projects from 1991 to 1996. The government plans to use bond issues as well to raise the investment funds for the various projects. The projects, including the high-speed railway, will be open to private investment.
Whether the HSR system is a government or government-private joint venture, Perocheau notes that the Taiwan HSR line is expected in the long term to provide a positive cash flow to help offset its capital investment. He cites the Japanese and French experience, where passenger revenues are usually two to three times higher than operating and maintenance costs.
For passengers, the profits from time saving and reduction of travel stress are incalculably higher. The trip from Taipei to Kaohsiung on the express HSR should take approximately an hour and twenty minutes, compared with a drive of four to five hours at the best of times during the week, and a drive of twelve to sixteen hours on holidays. Moreover, use of the high-speed rail will significantly reduce the freeway accident rate and cut down on exhaust pollution. - Osman Tseng (曾慶祥) is a senior journalist based in Taipei.