International Railway Journal - January 2008 - (Page 24) Asian metros Taiwan transit boom Taiwan’s major cities are investing heavily in metro projects to cope with rapidlychanging travel patterns and worsening road traffic congestion, reports David Briginshaw. T AIWAN’s largest city, Taipei, has an ambitious plan to double the size of its metro by 2014 and almost double it again by 2021. Kaohsiung at the south of the island is about to complete its first two metro lines, and is planning a light rail line, while Taichung plans to build its first metro line. Taipei has set itself some ambitious objectives for its expanding rail network: providing a metro station within 500m of anywhere in the city centre reducing the average travel time within the Taipei metropolitan area to 30 minutes integrating the metro with Taiwan Railway Administration’s (TRA) conventional rail services, and the Yuanshan station on the elevated section of the line to Danshui. high-speed services provided by Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation (THSRC), and increasing public transport usage in Taipei from 40 to 60%. The Taipei metropolitan area is home to more than 5.5 million people, and the Taipei Danshui Xinbeitou Shezi Beitou Tianmu Zhishan Shilin Circular Line Daqiao Elementary School to Taoyuan Minsheng Sanchong Ximen Shiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall Zhongshan Main Station Daan Guting WTC Elephant Mountain Taipei Zoo Zhongshan Junior High School Donghu Songshan Kunyang Taipei Nangang Xinyi Exhibition Centre to Xizhi Jiannan Road Neihu N Lines open Lines under construction Planned lines Airport Express Line being built Luzhou Touqianzhuang Banqiao Huilong Ci rc ul ar Lin e Jingan Muzha Dapinglin Circular Line WZS Line Yongning Dingpu Sanyin Line Nanshijiao Xiaobitan Xindian IRJ Ankang Line population is expected to reach 6.5 million by 2020. But according to Mr Chung-Cheng Kao, chief engineer of Taipei Department of Rapid Transport Systems (Dorts), which is responsible for expanding the metro, the city’s suburban population is growing rapidly as people move out of the congested city centre, where the population is now falling. This means people are travelling much greater distances than before. At the same time, a rapid rise in personal income has triggered an explosion in private car ownership. These two developments have quickly overwhelmed the road network and made the case for expanding the metro even stronger. The existing 76.6km metro network is carrying 1.12 million passengers a day. Dorts is currently engaged in adding another 79.7km under Stage 2 of expanding the metro. When this is completed in 2014, traffic is expected to increase to 2.3 million a day, but Kao says this is a conservative estimate. Another 121.5km of metro lines are being studied for Stage 3 which would boost daily ridership to 3.6 million by 2021. Stage 2 will cost $NT 300 billion ($US 9.3 billion) to implement including the electrical and mechanical element. Funding is split 70:30 between central and local government, and Kao says 24 IRJ January 2008
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