The TRA retains an excellent safety record, but the recent Yilan derailment should motivate it to reevaluate some longstanding issues along its east coast rail network.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/11/06
By: By Michael Reilly, Asia Dialogue
Credit: 捷利 / CC BY-SA 3.0
On October 21, a Puyuma Express train of the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) came off the tracks near Su’ao in northeast Taiwan, killing at least 18 people and injuring more than 150. TRA has a good safety record and fatal accidents involving passengers are rare. This one was the worst in the country since 1981, when 30 people were killed when a train hit a gravel truck.
Whatever the cause of the accident, and at this time of writing it is still far too early to know, it raises wider questions surrounding communications between the east coast of Taiwan and the rest of the country.
Credit: Reuters / Eason Lam18 people were killed and over 150 injured in the Oct. 21 Yilan train derailment.
Travel to and along the coast has always been hindered by geographical obstacles and the area has often seemed remote to many Taiwanese. In Chinese times, the region was the domain of aboriginal tribes and lay outside the area under nominal government control. Links improved under the Japanese but the road along the coast between Su’ao and Hualien remained dangerous and often closed by landslides. The railway link between Taipei and Hualien was not completed until 1980; a link traversing the south coast between Pingtung and Taitung only opened in 1992.
But for many, if not most, travelers, the railway is still preferable to the slow journey by road. Only in 2006, with the opening of the Hsuehshan (雪山) tunnel, were Yilan and Su’ao connected with Taipei by expressway. The tunnel is a triumph of civil engineering: the 5th longest road tunnel in the world and the longest in Asia when it was opened, it took 15 years to complete, largely due to the complicated geology of the area.
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