A controversial underground railway project in Tainan was approved yesterday, despite protests from residents, land rights advocates and environmentalists.
The Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency approved the project in a review after hours of debates about the necessity of property expropriation, residents’ rights and groundwater levels at the proposed construction site.
The project is to see 8.23km of railway tracks laid 30m underground in Tainan’s Yongkang District (永康), but would involve land expropriations, which sparked a series of protests.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Although the project has yet to be approved by a land expropriation committee, the Urban Planning Commission’s approval is interpreted as a definite “green light,” following a series of reviews that began in 2009.
Dozens of Tainan residents crowded the conference room, but when invited to speak, they stood silently and held up placards expressing their helplessness as the session ended.
National Chengchi University professor Hsu Shih-jung (徐世榮) said residents heard rumors that the project would be approved, so they decided not to protest and to make the review the “quietest and smoothest review” in the ministry’s history.
“There are no major flaws in terms of the project’s justifiability,” Deputy Minister of the Interior Hua Ching-chun (花敬群) said at a news conference after the review.
“There will be no forced relocations. Local residents’ rights to housing will be protected 100 percent. Housing will be provided for people whose property is expropriated and they will be able to purchase apartments from the Tainan City Government at 50 percent of market value,” Hua said, adding that 17 percent of residents living close to the project would have to relocate because most of their properties would be expropriated.
Hsu, who read 10 books about land rights and legal expropriation procedures in front of the Executive Yuan for 24 hours from Monday to yesterday in a protest against the project, said he was disappointed, even though the approval came as no surprise.
The lack of communication between the city government and residents was contrary to Hua’s statement that the railway project was justifiable and in the public’s interest, Hsu said.
“We did not have any meaningful conversation with the city government or the commission. Although we were allowed to speak at the reviews, the city did not respond to our questions or suggestions,” he said.
Hua said the ministry rejected Hsu’s request to call hearings to guarantee procedural justice on proposed land appropriations, because the hearing did not have a definite legal significance and officials were not legally obliged to answer advocates’ inquiries.
“Hua’s statement was completely in line with what the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration would have said. There is indeed legal basis to hold hearings, but the ministry is simply unwilling to do so,” Hsu said.
Residents and activists will take legal action to seek “administrative relief” if the ministry issues a formal expropriation order, he said.
The commission said that groundwater levels would not be a problem, despite environmentalists saying the opposite.
Hua said that environmental groups might have used incorrect data, or “cherry-picked data that fit” their agenda.
Taiwan Water Resources Protection Union spokeswoman Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) — who has raised the issue of high groundwater levels and the risk of soil liquefaction — said the committee did not review the groundwater level data she provided, but instead relied solely on data provided by developers.
“The ministry’s unwillingness to identify and solve problems and its tendency to evade responsibility are what disappoint me most,” Chen said, adding that there is little chance to overturn the commission’s decision via legal measures.
The Taipei MRT is open all night tonight following New Year’s Eve festivities, and is offering free rides from nearby Green Line stations. Taipei’s 2025 New Year’s Eve celebrations kick off at Taipei City Hall Square tonight, with performances from the boy band Energy, the South Korean girl group Apink, and singers Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) and Faith Yang (楊乃文). Taipei 101’s annual New Year’s firework display follows at midnight, themed around Taiwan’s Premier12 baseball championship. Estimates say there will be about 200,000 people in attendance, which is more than usual as this year’s celebrations overlap with A-mei’s (張惠妹) concert at Taipei Dome. There are
LOOKING FOR WHEELS: The military is seeking 8x8 single-chassis vehicles to test the new missile and potentially replace the nation’s existing launch vehicles, the source said Taiwan is developing a hypersonic missile based on the Ching Tien (擎天) supersonic cruise missile, and a Czech-made truck has been tentatively selected as its launch vehicle, a source said yesterday. The Ching Tien, formerly known as Yun Feng (雲峰, “Cloud Peak”), is a domestically developed missile with a range of 1,200km to 2,000km being deployed in casemate-type positions as of last month, an official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The hypersonic missile to be derived from the Ching Tien would feature improved range and a mobile launch platform, while the latter would most likely be a 12x12 single chassis
UP AND DOWN: The route would include a 16.4km underground section from Zuoying to Fongshan and a 9.5km elevated part from Fongshan to Pingtung Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday confirmed a project to extend the high-speed rail (HSR) to Pingtung County through Kaohsiung. Cho made the announcement at a ceremony commemorating the completion of a dome at Kaohsiung Main Station. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications approved the HSR expansion in 2019 using a route that branches off a line from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung’s Zuoying District (左營). The project was ultimately delayed due to a lack of support for the route. The Zuoying route would have trains stop at the Zuoying Station and return to a junction before traveling southward to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝).
Parts of the nation, including in the south, could experience temperatures as low as 7°C early tomorrow morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. A strong continental cold air mass coupled with the effect of radiative cooling would bring cold weather to several northern cities and counties, and could even affect areas as far south as Tainan early tomorrow, the CWA said. Keelung, Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan, and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties would experience temperatures below 10°C until this evening, according to cold surge advisories issued by the weather agency. The weather across the nation is forecast to remain
RSS