Major transport projects have long been presented as a potential boon to Taiwan’s south around election time.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/10/15
By: Eryk Smith
Credit: Reuters / TPG
Taiwan’s Minister of Transportation and Communications Wu Hong-mo (吳宏謀) made the news after telling a committee his office was reconsidering an idea to extend the High-Speed Rail (THSR/HSR) to Pingtung, a campaign pledge made by now-President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) during her first unsuccessful bid in 2012.
Former assessments accurately – in my view – essentially concluded that while it is technically ‘doable,’ the money spent on such a branch HSR line would be disproportionate to the benefits created. A 2017 report estimated about 5,000 people would use the line daily, but it would incur as much as NT$200 million (US$6.4 million) in annual losses.
One can take a Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) commuter train from New Zuoying or the Main Kaohsiung Station and arrive at the newly-constructed, elevated Pingtung Station in about 30-40 minutes. The line is also now electrified and by 2020, the line from Pingtung over to the east coast should also be, as all of Taiwan’s TRA lines convert.
Minister Wu’s talking points put the new guesstimate on the Pingtung HSR extension price tag at between roughly NT$62 and NT$75 billion (US$2 billion or so), but the same report that offered two possible routes and two price tags noted that the line would not pay for itself within 30 years and leave the HSR with a NT$10 billion (US$322 million) debt to work off. [FULL STORY]
