Current Issue

Speeding Up the South

• Byline:PAT GAO
• Publication Date:06/01/2012

An inside view of one of the entrances to the Kaohsiung MRT’s Formosa Boulevard Station (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

Kaohsiung’s metro system boasts some of the world’s most beautiful stations and shows great potential for spurring local development.

Since the 1990s, Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan has been working to shed its industrial image in favor of one with a more graceful, cosmopolitan feel. Following its opening in 2008, the city’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system has become a prime representative of that effort. “The system provides people with a civilized, progressive means of transportation,” says Chang Hsiu-chi (張修齊), standing vice president of the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp. (KRTC) and general manager of the KRTC’s Corporate Planning Department. “We’re dedicated to developing and promoting its inherent potential.”

“The Kaohsiung MRT system is essential for the city to stand as the southern counterpart of Taipei, one that plays a leading role in driving regional development and creates cultural values that residents can identify with,” says Chen Tsun-yung (陳存永), director-general of the Kaohsiung City Government’s MRT Bureau. Regional development was given a boost when the formerly separate city and county of Kaohsiung merged to become Kaohsiung City in December 2010. The new administrative entity is one of Taiwan’s five special municipalities, which are entitled to additional central government funding. With the merger, Kaohsiung became Taiwan’s largest city by area and its second most populous, trailing only New Taipei City, which encircles Taipei City.

In a sense, the development of MRT systems in Kaohsiung and Taipei represents an effort to balance the country’s transportation network, in which roads and highways have a much greater reach than railway lines. As of the end of 2010, according to statistics from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), Taiwan’s roads extended for around 41,300 kilometers. In contrast, the country had 1,598 kilometers of railway track—around 43 kilometers for the Kaohsiung MRT, 110 kilometers for Taipei’s MRT, 1,100 kilometers for the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) network and 345 kilometers for the Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR).

Taipei’s MRT service began in 1996 and has proven very popular with commuters, currently serving an average of more than 1.5 million passengers per day. Kaohsiung’s smaller system recorded an average of 134,515 passengers per day in 2011, marking a 7.27 percent increase over 2010, while January and February of this year saw average ridership approach 160,000 per day. Ridership on Kaohsiung’s MRT typically rises by more than 30 percent on weekends. Chang notes that the system is used more for leisure and tourism than for commuting. In contrast, Taipei’s MRT usually sees its lowest number of riders on Sundays.

KRTC standing vice president Chang Hsiu-chi prepares to take a spin on one of the rental bikes his company provides to expand the Kaohsiung MRT’s service area. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

The Kaohsiung MRT is a product of the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model of infrastructure financing. In other words, the metro network was constructed by the privately operated KRTC, which also has a 30-year contract to run and maintain the system. Operation of the MRT will be transferred to the Kaohsiung City Government in 2037. While the THSR also follows the BOT model, Taipei’s MRT and the TRA network have been funded and operated by the government.

Construction of Kaohsiung’s MRT was facilitated by the private sector’s lower costs, efficiency, flexibility and freedom from the bureaucratic restraints that accompany most government projects, Chang says. He notes that while regulations require government projects to be completed in a linear, step-by-step fashion, his corporation can proceed with a job even though factors such as budgeting have yet to be finalized, thereby cutting construction time.

Chen agrees with that assessment, comparing construction of Kaohsiung’s 43-kilometer MRT system, which comprises two intersecting lines, with the Taipei MRT’s new Xinzhuang Line, a single line that extends for around 20 kilometers from downtown Taipei to Xinzhuang District in New Taipei City. Work on both systems began in 2001, but Kaohsiung’s lines were completed four years ago, while the Xinzhuang Line just began serving passengers along most of its length in January this year. While local variables such as population density, structure density and the location of utility lines undoubtedly played a role in the longer construction time for the new Taipei line, Chen believes that Kaohsiung’s BOT approach was a factor that enabled his city to produce an operable system much more quickly.

Constructing a Stable System

Although the Kaohsiung system required much less time to build, construction quality does not seem to have been compromised. The system’s stability can be seen in the fact that from January to October 2011, trains arrived on schedule 99.97 percent of the time, while there were just six delays of more than five minutes, down from 19 in 2010 and 33 in 2009, according to the Kaohsiung MRT Bureau’s statistics.

A huge canopy appears to hover above the main entrance to the Kaohsiung MRT’s Central Park Station. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

“The system has effectively reflected the advantages of involvement by the private sector through the BOT model,” says Huang Tai-sheng (黃台生), a professor in the Institute of Traffic and Transportation in Taipei, which operates under National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan. Huang is also a member of the Taipei-based Chinese Institute of Transportation, a domestic nongovernmental organization formed in 1985 that draws members from academia, the private sector and public organizations. Kaohsiung’s MRT “meets the public’s expectations and in terms of budget control, construction quality and operational performance, is in no way inferior to its Taipei counterpart,” he says.

Most of the stations along the Taipei MRT system have efficient but utilitarian designs, which can be largely attributed to its earlier construction and pioneering role in Taiwan. The Kaohsiung system, on the other hand, is known for its spectacular stations, some of which have won international acclaim. Last year, the Kaohsiung MRT was selected as one of the world’s most beautiful subway systems by Metrobits.org, a website that compares and lists details of metro systems around the world. Metrobits highlights the Kaohsiung system’s Central Park Station and Formosa Boulevard Station and notes that “Metro operator KRTC is also taking public art in metro systems seriously.”

Earlier this year, BootsnAll.com, a website for global independent travelers, ranked Central Park Station No. 4 and Formosa Boulevard Station No. 2 on its list of the world’s 15 most beautiful subway stations. The entrance to Central Park Station was designed by British architect Richard Rogers and resembles a huge floating canopy, an effect that is boosted through the use of powerful illumination at night.

A Kaohsiung MRT train stops at World Games Station, which is located near the main stadium used for the 2009 World Games. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

The two lines of the Kaohsiung MRT intersect at Formosa Boulevard Station, the system’s main hub. The station features Dome of Light, an impressive public art installation by Italian-American artist Narcissus Quagliata. Made of stained glass and covering part of the station’s ceiling, the work measures 30 meters in diameter, took nearly four years to complete and depicts the human lifecycle from the beginning of life through growth, death and rebirth. Formosa Boulevard Station is named after Formosa magazine, which organized a large protest in downtown Kaohsiung in 1979, when Taiwan was still under martial law. The protest mushroomed and eventually led to a government crackdown on protesters as well as the arrest of political dissidents, including incumbent Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊).

In 2010, Formosa Boulevard Station took runner-up honors in the International Real Estate Federation’s (FIABCI) annual awards for real estate projects worldwide. The station was cited in the infrastructure category, while Central Park Station was second runner-up in the environmental category in 2009. FIABCI-Taiwan, the federation’s local branch, also recognizes outstanding projects through its annual Real Estate Excellence Awards. In 2011, the Kaohsiung MRT’s Oil Refinery Elementary School Station was honored in the environmental category.

The system’s Houjing Station also took second place in 2011 in the environmental maintenance category of the MOTC’s annual Golden Way Awards. The MOTC prizes honor exceptional road and railway construction projects.

Despite the Kaohsiung MRT system’s efficiency, beautiful stations and growing number of riders, its usage remains comparatively low. A 2010 survey by the MOTC showed that people in Kaohsiung relied on motorcycles and scooters for 61.6 percent of all trips, the highest level in Taiwan. In contrast, people used motorcycles and scooters for just 27.1 percent of all trips in Taipei that year. The KRTC’s Chang says that the 6 million people in the greater Taipei area rely on many means of transportation. The greater Taipei area includes Taipei City, New Taipei City and Keelung City. In 2010, overall use of public transportation—chiefly buses and the MRT—reached 37.6 percent in Taipei City, 25.9 percent in New Taipei City and 31.9 percent in Keelung City. In comparison, Kaohsiung residents used public transportation for just 6 percent of all trips, a level similar to that of Taiwan’s cities that lack subway systems.

The Kaohsiung MRT’s Formosa Boulevard Station features Dome of Light, a massive stained glass art installation by Italian-American artist Narcissus Quagliata. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

Chang attributes some of Kaohsiung’s low MRT utilization rate to the relatively small area currently served by the system. Public transportation planners worldwide generally consider 500 meters to be the maximum distance people are willing to walk to reach their destination. Kaohsiung’s population living within that distance of the city’s 37 MRT stations is around 350,000, or just 13 percent of the city’s total residents, he says. The Taipei system’s ongoing expansion makes it difficult to determine how many residents live within 500 meters of MRT stations, but with 96 stations now operating to serve an area that is much more densely populated, the number in Taipei is likely much higher.

In 2001, the Kaohsiung MRT Bureau proposed a plan to construct a 13-kilometer northern extension of the system to serve the city’s Gangshan District, home of Gangshan Industrial Park, and Luzhu District, the location of Kaohsiung Science Park. That proposal is currently being reviewed by the central government. After the merger of Kaohsiung’s city and county governments, the city’s MRT Bureau also began evaluating the viability of five other possible lines, including one reaching Fongshan District, the former location of the Kaohsiung County Government.

For now, the KRTC is concentrating on expanding the area served by the MRT by offering public bicycle rentals, a program launched in 2009. “Encouraging people to bike to and from MRT stations for two to three kilometers could triple our coverage to more than 1 million people,” Chang says. As of April this year, the KRTC operated 74 bicycle rental sites near stations, a number the corporation and Kaohsiung Environmental Protection Bureau plan to increase eventually to around 300. In April this year, the KRTC also began providing shuttle bus services between some MRT stations and selected destinations such as major industrial centers.

An artist’s depiction of a train on Kaohsiung’s planned light rail system (Photo Courtesy of Kaohsiung MRT Bureau)

Closer Cooperation

Although Kaohsiung’s BOT funding model resulted in an efficient, well-built MRT network, National Chiao Tung University’s Huang believes that greater government involvement could be needed to develop the system. “An MRT system’s development requires not only expertise in design, construction and management skills, but also close connections to city planning and administration,” he says. “It seems that the BOT model has discouraged greater support from the Kaohsiung City Government for the MRT’s development.”

Huang contrasts the growth of the Taipei MRT, which is operated by the city government, with that of Kaohsiung’s. “You can feel that Taipei City and the MRT system have a shared vision for the future, or at least a positive relationship,” he says. The Kaohsiung MRT would reach its potential more quickly if it were better integrated with the city government and had a larger role in the city’s overall planning, he adds.

As for the future, the Kaohsiung MRT system will soon be complemented by a 22.1-kilometer, 35-stop light rail system encircling the downtown area. Construction is expected to begin later this year and will be funded by the central and city governments. The light rail system, the first of its kind in Taiwan, will connect MRT and local TRA stations. Trains are expected to begin operating on at least part of the new system by December 2014.

Chen of Kaohsiung’s MRT Bureau points out that building light rail projects above ground is much cheaper and progresses much faster than constructing underground systems while offering equal convenience. “[Light rail] trains will move 30 kilometers per hour smoothly, steadily on their own tracks,” he says. “As a project leading to a sustainable public transport future, it will write history for Kaohsiung.”

Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw