Ownself pull
Reflections on a trip to Taiwan.
Taiwan has long been an idealized case, from our political leaders on down, of what our MRT system should look like, especially in terms of reliability.
But there’s more to Taiwan than just that. The few days I spent there may not be enough to see its upsides and downsides fully, but it is what it is. This will be a long one — and in fact I’ve to split things into two sections because of the many Taiwan-Singapore comparisons, so buckle up.
Colouring the background
A previous Singaporean transport minister has high praise for the TRTC. But in fact, the Taipei Metro started off poorly and was dealt an even poorer hand by the various operational issues it faced in its formative years. Eventually, of course, they overcame it. How?
There is one thing that I believe Taiwan has— and which Singapore and perhaps Hong Kong do not — which is a sense of railway culture. The Taiwan Railways Administration has been around even before the days of Japanese rule; and during Japanese rule, the TRA imported a lot of know how from Japan — even today, they still use JR-style fare collection gates.
A sense of economic autarky during the Chiang Kai-shek era also meant that railway vehicles for the TRA were and are still built locally, which even extends to modern rail systems. The need for improving railway infrastructure and development came before the Taipei Metro, when Taipei Main Station was buried in the 1980s.
In contrast, I’d think that Singapore likely viewed the KTM as something “foreign”. National disdain for the blue collar aside, with the KTM viewed as a foreign organization bringing foreign traffic in and out of Singapore, it is much more akin to the many airlines at Changi Airport, or the many foreign-flagged shipping companies going in and out of our ports every day. Yes, we owned the Jurong railway line, but it may have been, in a sense, providing a service to foreigners much like Changi Airport Group or the PSA Corporation today.
Likewise, continuous MRT development, not just in Taipei, provides a steady stream of work for the local railway industry, including what is now the Taiwan Rolling Stock Company. I would thus probably argue that we did not have the close to a century head start that the Taiwanese had. Railway culture in Singapore may have really only started with the MRT opening in 1987. Keep this in mind as you read the rest of this post.
In the North
The heavy-capacity lines of the Taipei Metro may feel very close to home — and just as well, for many of the technical parameters for systems are very close to Singapore if not identical. Consequently, there’s not much to write home about, apart from pointing out that somehow Taipei, like Toronto and New York, have managed to make transverse seating work on cars similar in size to Singapore’s.
The first difference I draw between Singapore and Taipei is the amount of underground space development done as part of the Taipei Metro. Unlike Singapore, where our only underground pocket track was constructed in Outram Park, Taipei has a lot more; even built in central areas such as near Taipei Main Station, Zhongxiao Fuxing, and Ximen stations.
Consequently, since cut and cover construction was necessary to build this infrastructure anyway, the TRTC opened the excavated space above as underground shopping streets. Arguably, this means that they see much more use than the equivalent efforts in Singapore. In Singapore the shopping levels are built above stations with direct exits bypassing them. In Taipei, with underground malls between the station proper and the exits, it is actually necessary to walk through them to get to the exits.
Of course, the explanation for Singapore can simply that we couldn’t afford the land to build so much cut and cover MRT, so we had to bore the tunnels instead, and thus lost the opportunity for large-scale development of such underground malls. This may have applied for the Initial System and perhaps the NEL; but with large amounts of cut and cover used to build the central section of the Downtown Line, one can’t help but ask whether the same can be done. It is, in fact — a section between Telok Ayer and Chinatown will be developed as part of a neighbouring parcel. And other spaces in the Taiwanese model are being created along upcoming rail projects in Singapore as well, such as at Marine Parade and Sungei Bedok.
The last benefit of this integration of urban planning with transit access is that the Taipei Metro can place exits in places where Singapore wouldn’t. Single-escalator and single-staircase exits are more common in Taipei, and can be built along the length of the station opening directly onto the sidewalk. Singapore has some of these smaller exit structures, but they are vanishingly few.
Not standalone
What I also like about Taiwan is a much bigger focus on the customer experience. While there’s still steps to take with regard to fare integration and the experience of using the bus, the Taipei Metro already provides us with many lessons. In fact, SMRT is in a good place to learn, with the recently announced tie-up with the TRTC.
For one, I was pleasantly surprised to note that bus arrival timing boards are provided inside the MRT stations, near the exits. They could be better — they could be much better — but it’s still an improvement over the Singapore status quo of nothing. Yes, the bus arrival boards may show ludicrously long timings, but that’s the reality of bus travel in Taipei.
In an effort to improve platform flow, many Taiwanese railways — not just the MRT — also draw out queue lines to tell people where to queue. Of course, this can be somewhat counterproductive, especially when the queue extends all the way to the other side in an island platform — as I saw when I was travelling during evening peak. But if it helps clear a platform faster by ensuring people don’t stop to fight through a crowd right outside the doors, then it works.
Of course, these queue lines aren’t consistent. Not every door at every station has them, and even where they exist their layouts can be wildly different. It also bears mentioning that we did try this before, so what happened to that?
A more orderly boarding arrangement also helps decrease time needed for boarding and alighting, but with carrots come sticks too. Taipei Metro has this habit of sounding boarding buzzers pretty much once the doors open unlike in Japan, and I must admit that pretty much every time I board a train, I get scared that the doors will close on me. So I better move fast. Overall, getting people to move fast speeds up journey times, which means we won’t need such long dwell times as is being practiced on the TEL.
And of course, wide Taiwanese roads allow them to more easily implement median bus priority like Seoul. It works, but bus frequencies seem bad, and from the empty buses I’m seeing even during peak hours, it appears most people would rather take the MRT anyway.
In Memoriam
Similarly to the MRT being developed in Singapore without regard for the existing rail lines, the TRA line to Tamsui and Beitou was shut down for conversion to MRT standards. On one hand, doing this allowed for the cut-and-cover construction mentioned above, but on the other, history buffs might say that this conversion resulted in a lot of history lost, as Japanese-era structures were swept away and replaced with modern MRT buildings.
Local conservation efforts resulted in the return of the former Japanese-era Xinbeitou Station building to a site near its old site, where the MRT station now stands. Today, the building is used as a community center, albeit with some historical exhibits telling the station’s history, including some retired TRA carriages being placed at the rebuilt platforms.
Similarly, the old Railway Department Headquarters outside Beimen MRT station, dating from the Japanese era, has been repurposed as a static museum to show the history of Taiwanese railways, albeit mostly of the TRA and several (minor) goods railways that previously served mining or logging operations.
Much like in Taipei nearly half a century ago, the TRA in Kaohsiung was also pushed underground relatively recently, with the area around Kaohsiung Station still a construction site as TODs take shape. But unlike Taipei, Kaohsiung reused this for a linear park and LRT tracks. Old railway sidings near the Kaohsiung Port have also seemed to be retained as an open-air railway museum with some old trains kept there. Similarly, the new grade-separated Sankuaicuo station was also built in homage to the old one, a city-designated historic landmark.
The cutest part of the culture of travelling by train in Taiwan, though, may not be the travel, but the food; with railway bentos widely praised and even celebrated. In fact, the catering arm of the Taiwan Railways Administration may well be one of the few bits of the TRA that can actually turn a profit. You can even order TRA bentos online and have them delivered to you if you’re near a TRA station!
Of course, the last and funniest bit of this respect for railway culture may be that Taipei Metro actually operates a holiday chalet on the site of the Beitou Depot. I never went there, but I can’t help but think that the LTA would never allow this to happen; security reasons and all. But this holiday chalet is no typical holiday chalet — it’s a Metro themed one, so there’s special Metro-themed play stations, railway discovery features, and all. Corporate retreats and other group bookings are also welcome.
Speeed
I have long held the Taiwan High Speed Rail up as a model for how the KL-Singapore HSR might work, even if Melaka is no Taichung. Riding the thing itself has only underlined this opinion. As scheduled and as delivered, the THSR’s fastest 100-series trains take around 94 minutes to make the run between Taipei Main Station and Zuoying north of Kaohsiung, at a top speed of close to 300kph.
There were slow zones, yes, but for the most part trains were able to keep to the 300kph limit. Consequently, it’s not hard to visualize that a non-stop Singapore to KL service could easily make the trip within 90 minutes at merely 300kph on a fully dedicated route, especially after factoring in time savings from skipping intermediate stations.
Malaysian value engineering advocates might thus want to take note — with similar train performance to THSR, it may not be necessary to have a 350kph alignment for KL-Singapore, even if it could be to facilitate faster travel time between Singapore and Penang. And if any HSR advocates still want to retain the 350kph standard, it may only be necessary if they’re able to cut down the travel time even more, or save on construction cost by using ERL tracks and avoiding the need to build a tunnel, for example.
A further curiosity is that non-reserved trains between Taipei and Taoyuan were full to the point of passengers having to stand, likely due to commuters using this route instead of riding the Airport MRT or the TRA. I saw this on a Monday night, but it also raises a curious comparison to the Jurong-Iskandar shuttle service and the appropriateness of using HSR trains for such a route.
Better still, the presence and convenience of the HSR means that there are literally no domestic flights out of Taoyuan Airport. With the HSR a short ride away, passengers passing through Taoyuan Airport can just take the Airport MRT a few stops and connect to the HSR there. Air-rail connections are even sold for such trips. Likewise, much of Taipei Songshan Airport’s domestic market was also eviscerated with the arrival of THSR.
This integration extends even to the Taoyuan Airport MRT stations, where the next HSR departures are shown.
Of course, the Taiwan HSR is not entirely perfect either. Unlike Japan, it is still necessary to connect to local transport to get to the cities proper— MRT in Taoyuan, Taichung, and Kaohsiung; TRA branch lines in Hsinchu and Tainan, and a BRT in Chiayi.
Some of these local transport systems are also worth a look at, so stay tuned for the second part of this report.
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