Taiwan’s HSR is very good but Japan’s is a level above. Even though Japan is a much bigger country, the rail network is far more extensive. The location of most of the stations is very convenient (as opposed to Taiwan where many HSR stations are well outside of town and require additional transportation), and many Japanese HSR stations have hotels and full malls attached. The trains themselves tend to be a bit nicer and Taiwan’s business class isn’t as nice as the JR Green Cars. The JR Rail passes are amazing if you optimize your use.
I don’t think Taiwan can fix the issue of existing station locations but if it brings HSR to the east coast, it would be a huge improvement.
I think they have experimented in places but in the Xi era it’s not really on the cards and is not really viable for China anyway. It’s a very complicated, poor and large country with a lot of deep societal problems.
More important is transparency and rule of law, but that doesn’t seem to be the direction being taken right now
I am no fan of the Hsinchu HSR location (as forumosans will know, the station is way out in Liujia) but there’s a very good reason it was not placed near Science Park: the vibration from the speeding trains would apparently mess up the production of semiconductors.
The tracks passes right by the science park anyway. Had the station been built near the science park, the trains would have to slow down when getting close to it. Currently trains passes the science park at top speed.
I agree that in general Japan’s Shinkansen is a superior experience to Taiwan HSR. But, it’s actually pretty close.
I guess it depends how you look at it.
I just did some math and Taiwan has 14.7km of HSR per million population, whereas Japan has 21.9. So, not too far off and it’s safe to say both countries have excellent HSR coverage. I believe in Taiwan the figure is about 90% of the population living near HSR. It’s probably similar in Japan, maybe a little lower.
Some Japanese HSR stations are far outside town, too. Shin-Osaka, Shin-Hakodate. But your point is a fair one: many Japanese HSR stations are right in the city center. Except for the Taipei stations, Taiwan’s are not. Also, in Japan, there is extensive local and regional rail at every HSR station, so when you arrive, you can get almost anywhere while staying within the transit network. That’s obviously not the case in Taiwan, because of decades of underinvestment in regional transit and overinvestment in roads.
I live in Yilan so yes this would be amazing If I’m not mistaken, the current government is looking at the feasibility of drilling a tunnel from Nangang more or less parallel to the Xueshan Tunnel. There is a big, empty parcel of land next to the Yilan TRA station just begging for an HSR complex. IMO, it wouldn’t be worth the cost to extend HSR all the way to Hualien. What makes more sense is to have a nice TRA/HSR transfer station in Yilan and expand capacity on the already very good TRA North Link Line from Yilan to Hualien and beyond. You would also need to double track the Hualien - Taidong section at some point if you wanted more capacity to Taidong.
Yes definitely. Not for cultural reasons or anything like that, more that China went through the cultural revolution and years of communist rule. The size of the country and wealth disparity, mixed with all the ethical and social problems in China would make it very difficult and I’m not sure the best system.
Actual functioning rule of law and transparent systems is what China needs more than anything, democracy isn’t the be all and end all.
I have a Taiwanese friend who is very connected in Shanghai and was telling me about conversation with friends who work in government at a democracy think tank there, he said that their conclusions were that even democracy for Shanghai city isn’t viable because of all the disparity.
You got to remember that China has a generation with basically collective PTSD from the cultural revolution and these people are the ethical and values educators to the next generation. China is a deeply messed up place and you can’t just dump multi party democracy on that.
I despise the CCP for multiple reasons but they have done a good job with economic growth. I hope they fall soon , but I don’t think compared to rule of law, democracy is paramount for China
It’s not dumped on that it bubbles up from that. I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what democracy is. It allows different voices and interests to rub to each other. It would give some of the regions in China more leeway right now China is just governed from Beijing effectively from a small coterie of officials with a dictator at the top . Democracy allows different systems to be pursued and at least you wouldn’t have that ultra heavy hand crushing down on dissenters all the time . There are different kinds of democracies too. .The US federal and state system works very well overall because it gives that local leeway for them to legislate some of their own laws , as one example .
Saying Shanghai couldn’t handle democracy is crazy in my book. There’s absolutely no good reason why it could not have local elected parties and officials. That person doesn’t know the history of Shanghai at all they should learn the real histor y of that city , it was poised to be the world’s greatest interrnational city until the Japanese and WII and CCP came along ! Now it’s just a facsimile of what it was poised to be.
In Inner Mongolia now and in Xinjiang they are suffering severe repression and erosion of their ancient cultures. It’s horrifying . Kids just turned up to school in inner Mongolia this week and suddenly they were told instruction is now in Mandarin. Parents have been jailed for protesting .
Democracy allows some light to be thrown on things that many would prefer not to. it ensures a degree of moderation usually because you know you will be out of office within four years. In a democracy they wouldn’t vote in a dictator for life 3000 for and 2 abstains. It must absolutely suck to be those representatives and knowing they voted for that.
If I’m not mistaken, the current government is looking at the feasibility of drilling a tunnel from Nangang more or less parallel to the Xueshan Tunnel. There is a big, empty parcel of land next to the Yilan TRA station just begging for an HSR complex. IMO, it wouldn’t be worth the cost to extend HSR all the way to Hualien. What makes more sense is to have a nice TRA/HSR transfer station in Yilan and expand capacity on the already very good TRA North Link Line from Yilan to Hualien and beyond. You would also need to double track the Hualien - Taidong section at some point if you wanted more capacity to Taidong.
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