This was a big argument against modernizing China back in the Qing Dynasty.
When railways were proposed: people protested due to the Feng shui problem.
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I think you all are missing the point of HSR to Yilan.
First off, as has been discussed, HSR will be used by some tourists (however, many will still drive, because by Taiwanese standards Yilan is a BIG place and you’ve still gotta get around once you’re there).
The real customer base of HSR will be people who live in Yilan. If you take the bus regularly to Yilan, you know it’s mostly people traveling alone. Some are commuters, some are just Yilan people of all ages going up to Taipei now and then for whatever.
In the old old days, it took 3 or 4 hours to get from Yilan to Taipei. After the tunnel, it only takes an hour. That changed Yilan dramatically. It used to be all sleepy farmland. Now it’s heaps of standalone homes and rows of townhomes, and even some high rises in places.
What will reliable 15-minute travel times do to Yilan? Another huge change, on the scale of the first tunnel. What HSR will do is turn Yilan County into a bedroom community for Taipei. It will be even more convenient to get from Yilan HSR to Taipei Main than from Keelung TRA to Taipei Main!
The big difference: cost. HSR tickets are pricey. So Yilan will be the bedroom community not for the riff raff, but for the well-to-do. Working every day in Taipei and raising the family in Yilan will be the new high status lifestyle. To some extent, it already is, but really only for those who are high-level enough to be in Taipei only a few times a week. An everyday commute is currently a little insane, but with HSR it will be downright manageable.
If HSR construction goes forward, I predict accelerating urbanization of the northern part of the Yilan plain, and over time, the area around the HSR will start to just feel like an extension of Taipei/Nangang. That’s how “close” it will be and what a game changer this is.
Now, as for whether this change is “good” or “bad,” that’s a whole other can of worms…
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Good post with lots of sensible points.
The HRS system has always been tied up into the development game. Think of the areas around Taoyuan HSR Station and Hsinchu HSR Station. So the location of the station will be almost certainly in the middle of nowhere, to allow maximal development, making the immediate “commute” benefit murkier.
Needless to say, there would be heaps of money involved in selecting the station location too…
Guy
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m thinking of.
If they have half a brain, they will choose the big stretch of empty land (currently parking lots and bus stations) directly east of the Yilan TRA station. That area will become the “Taoyuan HSR” of Yilan, with malls and high rises and all the rest. I have always suspected this land has long been reserved for an HSR terminal.
If they do it right, they can locate the HSR tracks within a very short connection to the TRA station (think less than 5 minute walk platform to platform). Yilan TRA should be totally rebuilt into a modern Hualien-style station, connected by pedestrian decks above road level to the HSR complex, while maintaining the historic Japanese station front on the city (west) side.
Meanwhile, the section of TRA line from Toucheng all the way to Suao has been rebuilt in recent years and is mostly elevated. All the major population centers in Yilan County lie along this line (about 400,000 people). Today, it has very infrequent local services (once an hour) which are only lightly used. In an HSR future, you can easily imagine running a few new EMUs on the stretch of TRA line from say, Toucheng to Su’ao, at high frequency of once every 5 or 10 minutes. This would be a local feeder to HSR and also change the overall transit game within Yilan.
Moreover, a close connection to Yilan TRA enables passengers traveling onwards to Hualien to transfer quickly. Extra sets of Puyoumas could be purchased, since when you start a service at Yilan and go south to Hualien, there is no track congestion limits as there are around Taipei.
In this way, Taipei Main to Hualien/Taidong trip time could be reduced by about 45 minutes and, crucially, ridership on the entire east coast TRA corridor would expand to its natural demand limit instead of being severely supply constrained as it is today. This would be a boon for tourists, but mostly, it would benefit east coast residents.
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Only for the super-rich, and when the price comes down they will make licenses expensive to keep it that way (and ostensibly to prevent collisions etc.).
Yeah, this is pie in the sky stuff.
They also said we’d all be in robo-taxis by now. Turns out, that’s actually kinda hard. It’s always two years away.
As for “individual automated air travel,” too many issues there to really begin unpacking, but suffice to say, in dense countries such as Taiwan and Japan, all types of rail transit from subways up to HSR systems will continue to be the most efficient, cost-effective, low-carbon, fastest-for-the-user forms of transit for many many generations to come. Therefore, Taiwan should invest in rail and reject outlandish pie in the sky futurism.
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I am glad this is 10~20 years in the future, if at all, I find all the new development zones in greater Taipei soulless and ugly.
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It will make a big difference to the East and NE for commuting and holiday periods.
On the front page of today’s Taipei Times:
Guy
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No map? l need a map.
Exactly. Where’s the map?
Provide one and get a digital cookie.
The poorly written Taipei Times article linked above indicates that the route will definitely bypass the Feitsui Reservoir zone—good. As forumosans have surmised, other details about the exact route remain vague.
Guy
Take a sharpie and make up a map?
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There’s a nuclear waste site in Pinglin? 
There’s nuclear waste at least in two sites in Xinbei: in Wanli and in Jinshan. With no long-term storage site either built or even planned, expect it to be there for a while…
But back to the map, which I imagine is intended to indicate that the HSR route to Yilan cannot / will not go through the Feitsui reservoir area.
Guy
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The finalized route is the one that is 56.4km because is going to avoid pass the Feitsui Water Reservoir’s (翡翠水庫) watershed
Sources:
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That’s a lot of tunnel digging under the coastal mountains there.
Last time they got lost during the digging, the tunnel didn’t meet in the middle and they had to dismantle one of the diggers and start again from one end.
The boring machine is still inside the mountain.
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