HSR should go to Lukang and Tainan center

How come the HSR to Lukang and Tainan doesn’t stop in the city center but like 20 miles from it? The one to Kaohsiung stops right near the main tourist attractions.

The idea of HSR is to connect Taipei proper and Kaohsiung proper ASAP.
It is not a commuter train or a normal shuttle between cities in-between.

Don’t get me started on location of HSR stations. The whole things a scam so people in the know could buy up cheap land and then build apartments in the vicinity of stations. Why else is the Hsinchu station in Zhubei and not Hsinchu?

The odd location of many HSR stations is connected to property development. The motivation was presumably to help finance this expensive bit of infrastructure–but one does wonder about the individual players who have benefited from the cough unusual location of some of these stations.

With Hsinchu (not actually in Hsinchu proper) I heard the reason was related to train vibrations and how that would mess up some of the science park manufacturing.

The one planning issue that drives me the most nuts though is the failure to connect all the way through to Kaohsiung Station–thereby leaving the TRA South Link as an orphan. People say this is fine because of the KMRT connection at Zouying–but for f*cks sake they could have terminated the north end of the HSR at Banqiao for the same reason, right? This certainly shows where is the center of power…

Guy

Yep Taipei got three stations other cities barely got one in the outskirts, however local governments would have been responsible for the locations of the stations.
The HSR was constructed to facilitate business travel not tourism, there were few international tourists back then.

But a lot of those “in the know” got the shaft as nobody moved into those areas and property values stagnated. Serves them right.

Yep for instance Taichung Wuri Station area never really took off, the areas around Miaoli station the same. For Miaoli station the then mayor and family owned a fair amount of the land or had connections to the developers. It should be called Houlong station as it is not even very close to Miaoli city.

Zhubei saw a building boom but, yeah, I guess occupancy might not be great. I lived in an area near the Hsinchu City/County border and occupancy is so low you can buy a new apartment for 1 mill and rent for 10,000 a month.

In Tainan there was a big build up at first but then it died out as nobody wanted to live out there. Same in Taichung now, lots of initial development but same problem, too remote and not worth it.

has this effected business at all? its put me off using the HSR. that and the price of it. i tend to go high speed bus.

It just seems it would have been insanely beneficial to Taiwan if the HSR went to Taoyuan airport and then the Science Park in Hsinchu. Its a pain to get from Taipei to Hsinchu Science Park

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HSR is a ripoff unless you really need the speed for business meetings or emergencies.
I just leave early, take the highway bus like you and use the time for sleeping or catching up on schoolwork or reading. under $500 for the bus or $1400 for HSR from Taipei to Kaohsiung, no contest.

The TRA train is a ripoff too, Kaohsiung to Taipei was about $800 for the high speed version which takes longer than the highway bus (barring traffic of course), no benefit taking TSA

(On a side note, im pretty salty about HSR and TSA that they both give discounts to seniors and disabled people, but only for Taiwan citizens, not ARC or APRC foreigners, plus if you go to the English version of the HSR ticket sales, you will never find any Early Bird deals, only on the Chinese side, the last time I checked a few years ago)
Edit: I take that back, just checked now and it appears they show early bird now, awesome)

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yea, would have been nice. i’m not too impressed with the airport MRT. i didn’t take the fast one as i just hopped on the first one that arrived, wasn’t any quicker than the bus and costs more.

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You can’t just pop in HSR station anywhere or a train station anywhere. Huge planning and construction and deconstruction needs to take place to put in a train line

Think about how difficult it is to put it in a train line or even a more difficult to put in an HSR line in the middle of a populated area with have buildings and houses. That is the reason the HSR is not in the center of many town but instead on the outskirts of town.

Yes local politicians and others may do what they can to get the station located in certain areas where maybe someone already own some land. But they also try to build up new industrial areas.

That’s because you didn’t take the express which is 36mins to Beimen…which is not too shabby.

underground

how frequent are they though?

Frequent, every 15 mins at least.

…but still not in compliance with the original terms of the contract, which the manufacturers evidently could not meet:

The article linked above also indicates that the non-express trains were delivered from Japan to Taiwan in 2011. Here we are, in 2017, and finally these trains are in service–slower than stipulated, but working.

Guy

I’m amazed it’s finally working and relatively fast. You don’t have any issues around traffic jams which is good.
It’s also fairly cheap at 160ntd.
Its not of much use to me personally but its a useful piece of infrastructure. My biggest issue with it is I feel the interchange with the MRT has not been done very well.