Taipei MRT Will Implement Different Routes After 11PM

If you pay attention to the posters in Taipei's MRT, you've probably noticed that the MRT's routing will be rearranged when the Xinyi Line opens sometime over the next month.  Specifically, the current Beitou-Taipower Building line will separate from the Danshui-Xindian Line at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and run along the new Xinyi Line, while the Xiaonanmen Line will be extended from Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall south to Taipower Building.  The routing in the MRT's original plan was a bit simpler, with the Xiaonanmen and Xindian Lines becoming one line, while the Danshui Line would be extended along the Xinyi Line.  This routing would have let the Xinyi Line run at full capacity, but it would also force Xindian Line passengers bound for stations on the Danshui Line to transfer, so the more complicated routing was chosen.
Now the MRT has announced that the Xinyi Line's route will change after 11PM.  To avoid having too many trains traveling on the elevated section of the Danshui Line and disturbing nearby residents, after 11 the Xinyi Line will terminate at Taipei Main Station.  The idea (I think) is that both the Xinyi Line and the whole of the Danshui-Xindian Line will run at 12 minute headways, but if they merged the headways would shrink to 6 minutes.
If this is the case, it means that once the Xinyi Line opens, service on the Danshui Line will actually be worse than it is now.  Now the section of the Danshui Line between Taipower Building and Beitou has 6 minute headways after 11PM, with this new routing headways will go up to 12 minutes- not a small difference.  Moreover, having two different routings is confusing- navigating a mass transit system should be as intuitive as possible; having two routings for different times of day will require riders to pay extra attention.  While I'm usually sympathetic to quality of life issues, it does strike me as a double standard: the MRT is very sensitive to noise complaints despite not being especially loud, but neither the Taipei nor the New Taipei governments seem interested in quieting down scooters, and New Taipei sometimes even does road construction late at night to avoid disrupting traffic.  Furthermore, there has been a rail line along the same route as the Danshui Line for nearly 100 years now, so it is worth asking why people who are bothered by the sound of trains moved there in the first place.

Plans for Wider Xinsheng S. Rd. Sidewalks

This is old news now, but worth a mention.  According to the Liberty Times, Taipei is planning on expanding the sidewalks along the section of Xinsheng S. Rd. between Roosevelt and Xinhai Roads from 3 meters wide to 5 to 8 meters as part of its "Shaded Boulevard Pedestrian Environment Improvement Design Plan" （林蔭大道人行環境改善設計計劃）.  Two car lanes will be removed, leaving this section of Xinsheng with three lanes in each direction.  New Construction Office Director Chen Der-yih (陳德意) claimed that this will disrupt traffic flow but within "tolerable" levels.  Construction is set to take place next year.  The new sidewalk space will be used for bicycle lanes and seating areas for adjacent restaurants.  Other streets slated for pedestrian improvements are Heping West Rd. Sec. 3 and Roosevelt Rd. Sections 5 and 6, though the former has encountered local opposition.
I'm definitely happy to see Taipei allocate more space to non-driving uses, just because of the environmental, safety and transportation efficiency benefits that discouraging driving brings.  That said, I think Taipei's focus on major boulevards is misguided- generally speaking the sidewalks on Taipei's main roads are adequate for the amount of pedestrians they have, though they certainly do need more space for cyclists.  This is certainly the case on this part of Xinsheng S. Rd: though not the most spacious sidewalk in Taipei, the west side of the road is never gridlocked and feels very safe, and the east side is even better.  Adding cycling paths would be great, and would provide a link between the Gongguan Ubike station and the Xinhai/Xinsheng station, but from the pedestrian's perspective this is already one of the nicer walks in Taipei.  Instead of focus on wide streets like Xinsheng, which could be better but are fine as is, I think Taipei should focus first on the areas that actually make walking terrible: medium-width streets like Lishui St., Jingwen St., Jinhua St. and so on that are wide enough for cars to drive fast but have no sidewalks, and intersections that lack crosswalks (like Shida Rd./Heping Rd., Zhongxiao W. Rd./Gongyuan Rd., or Xinsheng S. Rd. and Roosevelt Rd.).  In these situations, Taipei blatantly favors driving, refusing in the first case even to provide safe passage for pedestrians, even though the urban environment is far better suited to walking than driving.  It's when Taipei addresses these problems that we will know the government is seriously committed to improving the pedestrian environment rather than simply making cosmetic changes.

Taoyuan Announces Taoyuan-Xinzhuang Line Alternatives

Last week the Taoyuan County government released two alternatives for a rapid transit line between Taoyuan Train Station and Huilong MRT Station, slated to be the Taoyuan MRT's Brown Line.  The first alternative would be what the linked article calls light rail, and would run underground in Taoyuan City and elevated for the rest of its length.  (I was under the impression, however, that in Taiwan a rail line had to run on the surface for at least a quarter of its length to count as light rail.)  It would be 11.5km long, and cost NT$23.5 billion, or NT$2 billion/km (US$67 million/km).  Its depreciation rate, or the portion of construction costs that would be paid through operating profits, would be just over 30%.  The second alternative is a monorail line, which would be elevated for its full length and cost NT$16.4 billion, or NT$1.4 billion (US$47 million/km).  The lower cost would bring a higher depreciation rate, of 40%.  Presumably this is largely because the whole route would be elevated, which would be more acceptable with monorail since they can use sleeker support structures.

Feasibility Study for the Hengchun Branch Line

A little while ago I wrote about a Ministry of Transportation proposal to build a rail line from Kaohsiung to Hengchun.  According to the Central News Agency, the ministry has now has allotted NT$8 million (US$270,000) for a feasibility study which will determine if the line will be worth building.  The study will begin next year, and, if everything goes smoothly, construction could begin in 2017 and finish by 2023.  The line is expected to cost as least NT$30 billion (just over US$1 billion), and would be 38 kilometers long.  This comes out to NT$789 million/km (US$26 million/km).
A trip from New Zuoying to Hengchun on the line would take 90 minutes.  Currently seven million people make the trip to Kending every year.

Squeezing Yet More Trains onto the Bannan Line

The United Daily recently had an interesting report about how the MRT has saved time during rush hour on the Bannan Line.  Every weekday between 8 and 9 AM the MRT has stationed workers on the Bannan Line platforms at Zhongxiao Xinsheng and Taipei Main whose sole task is closing each train's doors.  This might sound wasteful, but the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp. claims it has allowed them to run two more trains during rush hour, permitting 29 trains per hour which can fit 3,000 more people, and reducing headways by fifteen seconds, to 2 minutes and 5 seconds.
Typically, after an MRT train stops, the driver steps out of the cab and only reenters once they see everyone has boarded the train.  According to Tan Gwa Gwang, president of the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp., the TRTC determined that this takes 5 seconds.  To save this time, the TRTC stationed staff near the driver's cab to watch the monitors showing passengers boarding and exiting the train, so the driver doesn't need to leave the cab.  When the warning alarm sounds, they reach into the cab and place their finger on the door closing button.  Once the alarm stops and there are no more passengers entering or exiting the train, they press the button and motion to the driver to leave the station.
Last year the TRTC had already saved 10 seconds per train by adding crowd control staff to Zhongxiao Xinsheng and Taipei Main's platforms.

Setback for the Dansui-Taipei Freeway

Last week a Taipei court rejected the Environmental Impact Assessment for the proposed freeway linking Danshui to Guandu.  Specifically the court found that the committee that issued the EIA failed to determine whether construction would damage the Mangrove Forest Conservation Area, and that the committee lacked sufficient information to make a ruling.  Eric Chu, the mayor of New Taipei, was unfazed, and promised to continue construction "because the EIA approval is still valid."
This freeway, planned to be 4.7 km long and cost NT$4.6 billion (for a cost of NT$978 million/US$33 million per km) has been controversial from the beginning, in part because of concerns about its impact on the mangroves, and also because residents in Guandu worry that it will cause more traffic.  There are in fact a lot of good reasons to doubt whether this project is beneficial.  For one thing, new freeways tend to draw passengers away from mass transit and encourage new development, which in turn means they fill up with new congestion rather than eliminate it.  Furthermore, New Taipei is already planning on building the Danjiang Bridge between Danshui and Bali, which should absorb some of the traffic that currently passes between Danshui and Guandu.  Rather than build both, perhaps the government should consider if only one would be sufficient to reduce traffic (I would favor the Danjiang Bridge since at least it offers a new route and would include a light rail line).
Then there's mass transit.  This corridor is uniquely well-suited to mass transit because all traffic from Danshui and Sanzhi to Taipei is funneled through one narrow area.  This means it's easy for it to become congested, while cars' ability to take passengers point-to-point less relevant because everyone is following the same route anyway.  Furthermore, there is already an underused mass transit line following this corridor: the MRT's Danshui Line.  Doubling the number of the trains on the line, thereby cutting waiting times in half, would presumably attract some of the traffic from the current road.  Doing so would be far less environmentally damaging than building a new freeway, and possibly cheaper as well- even if Danshui station needed to be expanded to turn trains (and I don't think it would- Nanshijiao and Nangang Exhibition Hall seem to do fine with just two tracks), the impact should be much lower than building a freeway.  Even if that wasn't an option, the city is already planning two light rail lines in Danshui that will funnel people coming from farther out to the MRT, making mass transit a more convenient alternative to driving.  The city could also consider more frequent bus feeder lines connecting to MRT stations, or even expand parking lots at MRT stations to encourage people to at least not drive down the Danshui-Guandu road.
The fact that congestion on this corridor is a problem also reveals how problematic the Danhai New Town development is.  Encouraging more people to move to Danshui will simply further increase traffic along the only road leading to Taipei, as well as create more sprawl.  It would make much more sense to focus development in areas that are linked to Taipei by more than a single road.
Simply put, there are many alternatives to building a freeway between Danshui and Taipei that would have less impact on the environment.  In general, building more roads will just attract more drivers, not "solve" traffic- especially if Danshui continues to attract new residents.  Rather than create sprawl by encouraging people to move to distant parts of the Taipei metropolitan region, and then build driving-enducing, environmentally damaging freeways to serve those people, the government would be better off providing better mass transit to places where people currently live.  With more mass transit there would be less need for parking and wide roads, and more space for parks and sidewalks.

Why Taiwanese Don't Take Mass Transit

A couple months ago the Ministry of Transportation released the results of a survey on transit use.  The full report is available here.  There's lots of interesting data there, much of which I would like to comment on later, but first I want to start with the section about why Taiwanese don't take mass transit.  The results are summarized below (note that respondents could choose multiple answers):

Reason	% in 2012	% change vs. 2009
Driving is more convenient	45.7%	-8.1%
Origin/destination too far from a station	35.0%	5.6%
Unnecessary because destination is close	20.4%	3.2%
Arrival times inconvenient/ too few	12.0%	1.8%
Waiting/transferring takes too much time	9.9%	n/a
Driving is faster	6.4%	n/a
Too many transfers	4.8%	1.2%
Not used to mass transit	4.6%	1.9%
More expensive than alternatives	1.8%	0.1%
Walking/ cycling is healthier	1.1%	-0.2%
Mass transit is too slow	1.0%	n/a

I have a few problems with these categories- "inconvenient" is too vague a category to be really informative, for one- but there are still a few points I'd like to make.
First, most people appear willing to use transit if it suits their needs.  Not being in the "habit" of taking transit, often cited as a reason certain places have low transit mode share, was chosen by a mere 4.6% of the respondents.  All the other reasons cited are related to convenience and could potentially be mitigated.  This suggests there is a lot of potential for mode share expansion, and little opposition to transit per se as often seen in the United States.
Second, a surprisingly large percentage of the respondents feel they are too far from any transit station, including bus stops.  This suggests that expanding Taiwan's bus networks should be a high priority, to ensure coverage for most of the population.  Given Taiwan's density and geography this should be more practical than in most other countries.  Improving the pedestrian environment to make walking faster and distances from stations therefore feel shorter may also help.  Interestingly, the number of people who feel they are too far from a stop has gone up by 5% over the past four years, though I don't know if there has actually been a decrease in bus service, or if people who avoided transit for other reasons in previous years have been convinced to switch so that those who feel stations are too far make up a larger proportion of those who don't take transit.
In terms of service quality, low frequencies are a big problem, accounting for the fourth and fifth most common complaints.  I've personally found this to be true everywhere outside Greater Taipei, and often even in Taipei itself.  However, not too many people seem to feel that driving is actually faster than transit, which I find somewhat surprising.
I would have also been interested to know if people avoided transit because of crowding, cleanliness or the inconvenience of carrying luggage, but at least on a larger scale this survey shows Taiwan should focus primarily on service quality to attract more transit riders.