Relocating Songshan

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
41

Shanghai does have a centrally located airport - Hongqiao. Pudong is mostly international while Hongqiao is mostly domestic. There is crossover though - e.g. some flights to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, etc. use Hongqiao.

Hongqiao is massively more busy than Songshan and seems to be there to stay (e.g. the main HSR station was built beside it). Admittedly Hongqiao not quite as central as Songshan, but then Shanghai is flat whereas Taipei is ringed by mountains. I guess things got squeezed together more when Taipei was being planned.

42

its not central. both shanghai airports are at the ends of the MRT lines. its closer than the pu dong one but its not anywhere that you are likely to go to unless you need to catch a plane. songshan is right smack in the middle of taipei. there is literally a million better and more important things you can stick in the middle of a city.

43

Having spent most of the last decade living in Shanghai I’d call Hongqiao pretty central. Moreover, it’s only become more central over time. Rentals around that area have gone crazy. You end up there all the time if you’re catching a plane/train, or if you simply have things to do in/around Gubei - a major enclave for wealthier residents.

As for Hongqiao airport being at the end of a subway line: first, that’s incorrect given that line 2 actually ends at Xujing Dong (and is set to be extended); second, calling a station like Xujing Dong an extremity of Shanghai’s subway network is just dumb given the network extends out to places like Kunshan. Now Pudong would be an example of something that actually is at the ‘end of the subway’.

What about the subway stations between Hongqiao Airport and the most central parts of Shanghai? Are any of them wastelands? What about the subway stations between Pudong airport and the most central parts of Shanghai? You visited any of them? Yeah, I thought not.

OK, Songshan is more central to Taipei than Hongqiao is to Shanghai. So what? Taipei is a far smaller city than Shanghai, so you’d hope it could manage a more centrally located secondary airport.

44

actually i used to live in pu dong not so far from the airport. shanghai is densely populated everywhere, even the apparently non visit-able PU DONG! 23 million population yo… and i went to gu bei once. it was a trek. central? not even once. taipei is smaller but its still not comparable, maybe if the aiport was in xindian it would be…but its not.

45

[quote=“Kiwi”]Shanghai does have a centrally located airport - Hongqiao. Pudong is mostly international while Hongqiao is mostly domestic. There is crossover though - e.g. some flights to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, etc. use Hongqiao.

Hongqiao is massively more busy than Songshan and seems to be there to stay (e.g. the main HSR station was built beside it). Admittedly Hongqiao not quite as central as Songshan, but then Shanghai is flat whereas Taipei is ringed by mountains. I guess things got squeezed together more when Taipei was being planned.[/quote]

Hongqiao is also at least 13KM from city center, with low apartment building as its surroundings. The runways are at a north/south orientation have flying there would have little to do with the city itself.

46

Yep, well we have people claiming earlier that HK flights come in over the city while every single time I ever visited it I landed straight from the water!

47

Man, a nice big actual park in the center of the city would be so good.

48

[quote=“OrangeOrganics”]Man, a nice big actual park in the center of the city would be so good.[/quote] It would be awesome. But the fear is that it would not be a park, but chocablock with tall buildings.

49

Funny how in Kai Tak, it was the opposite, most approaches were from the hill towards the sea, rather then the other way round.

Md11 cap’t eh? Way cool. Met a DC10 cap’t once. Flew for World Airways he did. The bird seems to be hard to land though? Had a nasty habit of flipping over in high winds.

50

it made landing at Kai Tak especially challenging. Many incidents at Kai Tak involved air plane over shooting the runway due to strong winds and ends up in the sea.

[quote=“tommy525”]
Md11 cap’t eh? Way cool. Met a DC10 cap’t once. Flew for World Airways he did. The bird seems to be hard to land though? Had a nasty habit of flipping over in high winds.[/quote]

Kai Tak and MD11 in the same post made me recall this incident…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_642

but that was at the new HKIA.

51

Yeah IIRC, China Air had the ignoble distinction of being the last to crash at Kai Tak and the first to crash at Chep Lap Kok.

They rolled a six week old 747 into the bay (damaged beyond repair) on landing long at Kai Tak (no fatalities or serious injuries) and it’s Mandarin subsidiary had that MD11 flip its wing on landing at ChepLapKok. Miraculously “only” three fatalities especially in view of the bad crash. Both during a typhoon.

SQ lost a 747 during a typhoon at CKS> I would say don’t fly when a storm is nearing.

But back to Songshan. If they can make it into a large park like Golden Gate Park in SAn FRancisco or Central Park in NYC, then i would be in favor of getting rid of it as an airport. Otherwise, NO.

Meantime, what have they done with the old tiny airport in TAichung? ShuiNan I think it was called.

edit: OH here are some plans. What they do with Shui Nan will give you an idea what they will do with Song Shan

tarp.longi.tw/eng/02background/

Oh here it is:
en.tracesofwar.com/article/31090 … irport.htm

That was the coolest tiny airport to fly to. Back in the day I used to take China Air’s YS11 (they bought two second hand ones from Japan and promptly lost the first one landing at SongShan). Scared me shitless that plane, but used to be a scary 30 min flight to and back from Shuinan. I hated flying in the plane , and still hate turboprops. But it was way cool to roll up to the chock and walk out and through one door and right into this cute ,tiny terminal that was smaller then the smallest bus station it seems and take a quick taxi ride into downtown Taichung !

Back in the day there was less security too. Just roll up to the airport and get your ticket and boarding pass and fly. That simple.

Later Fokker F50s and SAAB 340s and ATR42s flew to Shuinan before it closed up and operations moved to CCK . Which i’ve never been too.

So what has happened to ShuiNan? What have they done with it, other then make this giant wave pool used in the filming of whats that movie again? The boy and the tiger in the boat.

52

I lived in Pudong too for a couple of years. I was at Century Park, the city terminus of the Maglev line to Pudong airport. Getting from the Maglev station to Jing’an Temple was the same distance as from the temple to Hongqiao airport. Surely that makes Hongqiao airport rather central?

The Japanese community was always concentrated in Gubei - right by Hongqiao. I think Shanghai’s first Dingtaifeng opened out there (on Shuicheng Rd. - though the first might have been the one at Tianzifang), and Gubei has always had the flagship Carrefour. When living in Jing’an I would be out in Gubei all the time. Gubei (and Hongqiao) could surely only seem a trek to nowhere if your starting point was the opposite side of town.

Many parts of Pudong remain empty, including areas near the subway line - once you get past Guanglan Rd.

I think Taipei is lucky to have a centrally located airport. It’s brilliant. Can be really convenient depending where you are flying too. The idea that a city retaining a conveniently located airport is some extravagance for the wealthy is ridiculous. Got no idea how the sums would work out, but quite possibly you end up ahead in terms of wasting fossil fuels etc. given people needing to fly don’t need to first drive out to the middle of nowhere.

53

I lived in Pudong too for a couple of years. I was at Century Park, the city terminus of the Maglev line to Pudong airport. Getting from the Maglev station to Jing’an Temple was the same distance as from the temple to Hongqiao airport. Surely that makes Hongqiao airport rather central?

The Japanese community was always concentrated in Gubei - right by Hongqiao. I think Shanghai’s first Dingtaifeng opened out there (on Shuicheng Rd. - though the first might have been the one at Tianzifang), and Gubei has always had the flagship Carrefour. When living in Jing’an I would be out in Gubei all the time. Gubei (and Hongqiao) could surely only seem a trek to nowhere if your starting point was the opposite side of town.

Many parts of Pudong remain empty, including areas near the subway line - once you get past Guanglan Rd.

I think Taipei is lucky to have a centrally located airport. It’s brilliant. Can be really convenient depending where you are flying too. The idea that a city retaining a conveniently located airport is some extravagance for the wealthy is ridiculous. Got no idea how the sums would work out, but quite possibly you end up ahead in terms of wasting fossil fuels etc. given people needing to fly don’t need to first drive out to the middle of nowhere.[/quote]

you can say its central if that makes you feel better, but its not comparable to songshan which is smack dab in the middle of taipei! repeating myself now…

pudong might be crappy and pretty much like the chinese countryside but its not empty. if your point was that it was crappy that is fair enough, past century park it is basically a dump but people still have to go there.

well soon you wont need to drive to the middle of nowhere to catch a plane as it will take 35 mins from taipei to get to taoyuan airport on the new aiport mrt. 35 mins is as convenient as anyone needs!

54

Tommy, vast areas of Taichung have been razed over the last few years, which generally is a good thing as they were mostly
crappy factories and structures. The city is Taiwan’s biggest
construction project or at least the amount of land waiting for construction of high rise is! There is also an MRT line along wenxin road and it does pass through Parts of Beitun If I recall correctly. As for Shuinan it is part of this huge redevelopment plan also the new mayor recently cancelled the ridiculous plans to build a weird super expensive tower.

55

Rick, I’m not pretending to make myself ‘feel better’. Hongqiao is a central airport. Starting from Jing’an, a taxi to PVG would cost over three times one to SHA.

While Songshan is indeed more central than Hongqiao, that makes sense given Taipei is smaller than Shanghai, has expanded east (i.e. towards Songshan), and is surrounded by mountains.

56

kiwi, don’t kid yourself. if shanghai was run by the same people running taipei hongqiao airport would be located in new shanghai city right now. jing an isn’t even the middle, try getting your taxi from peoples square. if taipei is surrounded by mountains it is just another point against the airport…not for it. as soon as that MRT line to taoyuan airport is finished songshan becomes redundant and will simply be taking up prime space…

57

I’m not ‘kidding myself’. I’m expressing my opinion, based on living 5 years in Taipei, 10 years in Shanghai, and flying often.

Given TPE and PVG are similar distances from the centers of Taipei and Shanghai, respectively (i.e. over 40km), Taipei’s subway out to TPE will need to be a lot better (i.e. faster) than Shanghai’s subway to PVG for it to not suck. Getting to PVG by subway takes an hour and you have to switch to a smaller train at Guanglan Rd. Despite living five mins walk from line 2 (Jing’an Temple) I preferred to bus or taxi to PVG. Obviously if your starting point is Pudong it’ll be different.

Given Taipei is so much smaller than Shanghai, you’d think it might want to hang onto an airport nearer than 40 km away, particularly when Shanghai has also kept its secondary airport.

Yeah, Songshan takes up prime land, but. . . Taiwan’s aging society makes a future population boom in Taipei unlikely, and if Songshan closed it would only get turned into yet more overpriced apartments (something Taiwan already has an excess of). . . As for parks, Taipei isn’t too badly off in that regard, plus the mountains provide hiking that beats any downtown park. I’m just not sure I see compelling upside in closing convenient and irreplaceable transport infrastructure. If it ever happens I can see it being a cash bonanza for real estate firms more than a public good.

58

Songshan is not convenient for much of the city. I used to take me at least 40 mintes to get there from Xindian and required 2 mrt changes. It was one bus to Taoyuan that took an hour.

Most people don’t travel more than once or twice a year so we know the airport is for the business community mostly. So their convenience is worth your fresher air, biodiversity, and a legacy park?

59

Like with any facility, accessibility depends on starting point. But having an extra option still helps everyone on some level, even if just because fewer people are clogging up TPE.

I agree fresher air would be nice, but there must be a million things Taipei could do on that front besides closing the airport.

Even if Songshan really did purely serve the ‘business community’, that’s still just a community of people doing their jobs. More convenience helps those people spend more time with their families, benefiting society. The cabin crew and other airport workers get the same quality-of-life benefits.

I don’t see retaining a conveniently located airport as some elitist thing to do.

60

Also, the fact that Songshan is a large UNBUILT area with grass on much of it must be a breather and air circulator for the Taipei area?

That is a factor that can only be replicated if it was all turned into a forest park.