Taiwan’s Bullet Trains Can’t Outrun Controversy

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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"TAIPEI, Taiwan, Dec. 28 - The sleek, bulbous-nosed new bullet trains here look like they are designed to whisk passengers across wide-open spaces. But on this congested island, they represent the start of a 180-mile-per-hour commuter train system.

"After a quarter century of planning and construction, the system is scheduled to open on Jan. 5. It will tie together cities and towns where 94 percent of Taiwan’s population lives, offering an alternative to clogged highways and the air pollution the vehicles on them produce.

“For some urban planners and environmentalists, the project is an example of how Asia may be able to control oil imports, curb fast-rising emissions of global-warming gases and bring a higher standard of living to enormous numbers of people in an environmentally sustainable way.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/world/asia/04taipei.html?

Dave

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Talk about a global economy!

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Cool, when do we get one?
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Oh thats right, unless its a deep pocket special interest group like the airline lobby or big oil, we dont exist…[}:)]
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Eventually we will move in this direction, especially if gas $ continues to climb it will get so painfull to drive or fly that even the staunchest SUV owners will cry uncle and begin carping for an alternative.[;)]

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We get one of those Taiwan bullet trains when we are all living at the population density of Taiwan.

I saw some figures on the passenger miles for the Japan New Tokaido Line, and it is something completely off the charts compared to anything in Europe let alone any Amtrak line. I imagine Taiwan’s Bullet Train will see similar business.

I mean consider Japan. It is a country the size of California hosting about 100 million people. Most of it is rugged volcanic mountains, and most of the people live in thin strips of flat lands in the coastal areas, and much of that land is set aside for small plots for growing food on account of a national policy to be self-sufficient in at least rice growing, which is done more for national security reasons than economic interest because one can get rice for 1/3 the cost from Arkansas. A great number of people are served by the Bullet Train as it also connects into the vast network of local trains and subways. I imagine Taiwan to be a rugged volcanic island country on the scale of a downsized Japan.

To the extent that in the U.S. we probably have too many highways and are spending an irrational amount of gas and time in cars going too large distances to jobs and shopping and to visit relatives, my impression was that Japan has too many trains, and that many Japanese spend inordinate portions of their lives going long distances on those trains to match where they live to where they find work, and part of this is the consequence of land-reform policies that were imposed by General MacArthur.

As to the endless carping about SUV’s, I found myself in moderate traffic congestion driving south from Green Bay on U.S. 41 as a Packer game let out, and I was driving amongst a sea of SUVs. Guess what, a lot of them were “downsized” SUVs like the Lexus 300, the GMC Envoy, and the Ford Escape; most had a minimum of two people in them, and a lot had the whole football-fan gang of 4 or 5 riding in some semblenc

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A quote from the article:“Passengers who travel on a fully loaded train will use only a sixth of the energy they would use if they drove alone in a car.”

A little math anxiety here- The fully loaded train is only 6 times more efficient than a car with a single occupant? If I put 6 people in the mini van, am I equalling the efficiency of the train? What if the train isn’t fully loaded? How would that compare?

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You certainly manage to read for detail. As far as I can recall, the efficiency of a vehicle will decrease with additional riders - although the efficiency per person still increases.

Nevertheless, as train occupancy decreases, the efficiency per person decreases even more significantly. A train with a single occupant is nowhere near as efficient as a car with a single occupant.

Another question that could be raised is “how are they measuring efficiency?” Is it in terms of energy usage? environmental concerns? time saved (or wasted)? Do they take into account the transportation to/from the train station - after all, in many cases, station to station is not the most “efficient” route to get from point A to point B, particularly with intracity travel.

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Don’t forget that the entire notion of distance travel using highways being a preferred mode is not nearly as natural as people think. If passenger rail had anywhere close to the level of subsidies provided to highways/driving the case for high speed passenger rail would appear much stronger to the American public - or perhaps if like driving, the passenger rail subsidies could be effectively hidden. There are numerous heavily populated corridors or cities who are close enough to make local high speed rail service attractive (especially given that gas prices are likely to increase as the supply becomes more tighter and the government is starting to move away from the freeway model to the toll road model). Already the Northeast Corridor is an attractive and profitable rail corridor due to congestion on the roads - and now with the stricter aviation security standards, even able to compete with airlines because of the shorter security lines.

Its unlikely that the bullet trains will get built in the U.S. anytime soon - it would probably take another major Middle East oil shock to even make more extensive passenger rail along corridors where rail travel could be successful (such as Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinatti, Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Newport News-Richmond-Washington, DC, Dallas-Houston, Miami-Orlando-Tampa, San Francisco-Los Angeles-San Diego and likely many others) a higher priority. The key is to get people to recognize that all transportation systems are subsidized by the government and that its in America’s interest to have a more generalized transportation policy rather than using air for long distance travel where air is more efficient and driving for short/medium distance travel. The mistake of the 1950s was to put all of the transportation focus on roads/air. The fact that the transportation policy in the U.S. was made by highway/automotive interests is undeniable - but now, its going to cost billions or trillions of dollars to make a more g

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But remember that is 1/6 of the energy for every passenger aboard - the total energy savings for a fully loaded train would be very large. You have to multiply the number of rail passengers by 6 to show the total energy savings the train results in. Plus, you’d ad the extra congestion - and with more congestion on the roads, the cars (except for hybreds) will use more energy. Of course, you have to wonder what type of car they are using as the baseline - it makes a big difference whether you’ll taking about a Honda Civic or a Hummer H1 as the baseline vehicle. Chances are since Tawaiin would likely have mainly Asian cars on their road, the average car there is closer to the Honda Civic or maybe an Accord than the Hummer.

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[quote user=“Paul Milenkovic”]

We get one of those Taiwan bullet trains when we are all living at the population density of Taiwan.

I saw some figures on the passenger miles for the Japan New Tokaido Line, and it is something completely off the charts compared to anything in Europe let alone any Amtrak line. I imagine Taiwan’s Bullet Train will see similar business.

I mean consider Japan. It is a country the size of California hosting about 100 million people. Most of it is rugged volcanic mountains, and most of the people live in thin strips of flat lands in the coastal areas, and much of that land is set aside for small plots for growing food on account of a national policy to be self-sufficient in at least rice growing, which is done more for national security reasons than economic interest because one can get rice for 1/3 the cost from Arkansas. A great number of people are served by the Bullet Train as it also connects into the vast network of local trains and subways. I imagine Taiwan to be a rugged volcanic island country on the scale of a downsized Japan.

To the extent that in the U.S. we probably have too many highways and are spending an irrational amount of gas and time in cars going too large distances to jobs and shopping and to visit relatives, my impression was that Japan has too many trains, and that many Japanese spend inordinate portions of their lives going long distances on those trains to match where they live to where they find work, and part of this is the consequence of land-reform policies that were imposed by General MacArthur.

As to the endless carping about SUV’s, I found myself in moderate traffic congestion driving south from Green Bay on U.S. 41 as a Packer game let out, and I was driving amongst a sea of SUVs. Guess what, a lot of them were “downsized” SUVs like the Lexus 300, the GMC Envoy, and the Ford Escape; most had a minimum of two people in them, and a lot had the whole football-fan gang of

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According to the Washington Post the biggest hit is supposed to be taken by the 4 national airlines in Taiwan. It makes everything in Taiwan about 90 minutes travel time to Taipei. You would spend longer taxiing to the runway from the gate.

The Texas High Speed Rail project was torpedoed by Southwest Airlines because they would have had to compete with a service that dropped people in the downtown areas of the cities. It was supposed to link the major cities in Texas, but Southwest scared everyone with images of 200 mph trains at grade crossings and ripping through neighborhoods with jetlike noise every 5 minutes.

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Really? sounds like the people Of Rochester Minn should have allied with Southwest airlines then, an not the Mayo clinic.

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Please …hold the Mayo.[;)]

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No, tell me how you really feel.

By the way, Santa Barbara down through San Diego may be one continuous urban area, but it has nowhere near the population density of the urban centers in Japan, Taiwan, or South Korea. In addition to laying into people for their 1-person occupied cars, you will also need to take people to task for their 1-family occupied detached dwellings.

Don’t know, go ahead and think that the voters are an “Idiocracy.” Express those feeling among like-minded people on this forum and other places. But effective persuasion and turning things around that have been at the core of our political-economic culture – home mortgage tax deduction, Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac-Fannie Bryce – whatever the institutions that allow people to own their own homes in numbers, Highway Trust Fund, widespread ownership of cars – I think we need to better get into the heads of people who don’t think along our lines if we want to make progress on the rail issue.

But you have to look at people for who they are. The WSJ has an insightful piece about the Dan Ryan mess in Chicago, about people “forced” onto what is pretty good transit, the reaction of transit riders who have to be packed in more tightly, the reaction of motorists who are taking the trains, and the reaction of people who will give up their SUV’s when you pry the steering wheel away from their cold, dead fingers. As I said, the trains will eventually come, but calling people “idiots” for not buying into the NARP party line is not effective politically.

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I was wondering - Is it at all possible for the NYT to print an article without trying to tie it in to global warming?

No wonder they’re losing readership left and right…

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I’m with you, fellow namesake! Here in Idaho it’d be great if we had a bullet train running from Coeur d’Alene to Boise at 180 mph. That’d cut the travel time down by half, avoiding having to use the flying coffins, and we’d save the planet in the process.

BTW - can we have one that allows us to carry our pickups (aka AutoTrain), complete with our gun racks fully stocked?

No, no, no, I’m being serious! [;)]

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Take another look at the success of Japan’s trains and the population/urbanization density.

One reason the commuter trains are so successfull, is that most people can WALK to the local Train Station, then WALK to the job at the other end.

And those are not “Bullet” trains. BUT, the bullet trains connect at each end to other mass transit stations, so you travel to your destination building once you arrive in your destination city.

In addition to the infrastructure for the rails and high speed trains, you need a way to get folks to the stations and from the stations to the buildings.

In most US transit systems I have seen, commuter rail must put large parking lots (or structures) near the stations to enable the riders to park the “Terminal” commuting device (car or SUV) in order to access the train…very few I have seen are without them.

Take the Metro in DC, for instance.

The outlying stations all have large lots; the routes all go to downtown DC, via the Pentagon, where many many bus lines originate/terminate (for terminal commutes) or through the many stations in the downtown area, where 90% of the offices are within walking distance of SOME metro station.
Some of the parking lots even go so far as to prohibit parking before 9AM, so that commuters will not get all the spaces, and day trip/shoppers are able to use the Metro to enter the city, leaving the cars behind.

And that is one of the issues in the West…not everybody on the freeway is going to the same spot. (Although sometimes it feels that way!).

San Diego is so spread out, there is not a single point everyone has to pass through to get to their destination. So to make the Light Rail work, they will have to find a way for folks to get to the offices once they arrive close to town. Ridership is aparrently picking up; perhaps they are solving that problem.

Unfortunately, most modern american commuters consider a walk of a mile to be excessive… <

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Personally, I think the USA is probably the first country where the distance between major metropolitan centers are long enough to seriously look at building maglev lines.

Imagine going from downtown Chicago to downtown Minneapolis-St. Paul in just over a hour! [8D] Or Jacksonville, FL to Miami, FL via Orlando, FL in 1 hour 15 minutes. Given the potential top speed of 310 mph (way faster than any steel rail train), it could have dramatic effects many parts of the USA.

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“Some of the parking lots even go so far as to prohibit parking before 9AM, so that commuters will not get all the spaces, and day trip/shoppers are able to use the Metro to enter the city, leaving the cars behind.”

I commute using the Metro regularly, and your information isn’t accurate. What Metro does is they sell guaranteed parking spots which are held for permit holders until 10 or 11:00 a.m. - if the permit holder doesn’t use the spot, that spot would be open for midday travelers. They did that because generally people had to arrive early - often before 8:00 a.m. to find a parking spot. However, you can even leave your car parked overnight in the parking lot if you prefer (and some people who live walking distance from Metro but work in a non-Metro area like Tyson’s Corner do exactly that) - and its a lot cheaper because they don’t start charging at most stations until 10:30 a.m. BTW, they have recently expanded the parking stations at some of the more popular stations like Vienna and Shady Grove by adding additional parking decks so its easier to find spaces if you go in later to work or for other reasons now than it used to be which makes the guaranteed parking spots less popular.

When Metro has experimented with dedicated bus lines (like along Columbia Pike where the buses run almost as frequently as the trains) to Metro Stations, they have been highly successful. The problem is that the Columbia Pike corridor is the exception not the rule.

BTW, the parking costs in downtown Washington have also driven more demand for Metro.

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Well, when I was visiting two years ago (Just before Thanksgiving, 2004) we would drive from ANdrews to the Metro Lot in Suitland, MD. The part of the lot we parked in was marked for no parking before 9AM. We parked for $2 or $3 for the day, and rode the Metro into DC for sightseeing…Even there were four of us, traveling off peak on the metro was much less expensive (and less stressfull) than driving into town and trying to find a place to park…

So the natural assumption was the lot was set aside for shoppers/tourists, not commuters.