By Shelley Shan / Staff reporter
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A proposal to extend the high-speed rail to Yilan County has taken into account the nation’s overall railway network, and is not intended solely to ease congestion in the Hsuehshan Tunnel, the Railway Bureau said yesterday.
The bureau issued a statement in response to questions over the feasibility of the project.
Critics said that costs for the 60.6km-long extension could surpass NT$600 billion (US$18.5 billion) and still would not ease weekend and holiday congestion at the Hsuehshan Tunnel, known as the bottleneck section on the Chiang Wei-shui Memorial Freeway (Freeway No. 5).
A passenger boards a high-speed rail train on Aug. 21 last year.
Photo: CNA
They also feared it would siphon travelers away from the Taiwan Railway Corp (TRC) system and public buses, they said.
“These claims differed substantially from the project’s policy objectives, basis of evaluation and actual details,” Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Chen Hui-chun (陳慧君) said.
“The feasibility of the high-speed rail extension to Yilan was cautiously evaluated from the perspectives of the nation’s overall railway network, transportation connectivity to eastern Taiwan, balanced regional development and the resilience of the national transportation network,” Chen added.
The project is estimated to cost NT$352.175 billion, which was calculated by a team of professionals based on the Public Construction Commission’s Public Infrastructure Project Cost Estimation Manual, the bureau said.
The estimated cost was also audited by officials at the National Development Council and Executive Yuan, the bureau said.
Compared with ongoing construction on the Taipei MRT, where 1km costs from NT$6.6 billion to NT$7.8 billion, each kilometer of the high-speed rail to Yilan would cost about NT$6 billion, the bureau said.
The claim that the construction cost would balloon to NT$600 billion was not backed by any professional basis or supporting evidence, the bureau said.
Any funding adjustment caused by inflation or construction changes must be re-evaluated in accordance with administrative procedures, it added.
Once the Yilan extension begins operation, it could divert about 15 to 17 percent of passenger car traffic from Freeway No. 5 on weekends and holidays, with the net reduction in weekend and holiday passenger car traffic projected to reach 3 to 6 percent.
Taiwan Railway has been unable to increase train services to Yilan, Hualien and Taitung counties due to capacity limits in the section between Shulin (樹林) in New Taipei City and Cidu (七堵) in Keelung, the bureau said.
In the future, the high-speed rail extension could service medium and long-distance travelers heading to the east coast, while Taiwan Railway could transport intercity travelers, regional commuters and cargo, the bureau said.
It has proven in the past two decades that the high-speed rail and Taiwan Railway systems can coexist and report revenue growth through an efficient division of transport functions, the bureau said.
