The Taipei City Government yesterday said it hopes to vacate the site currently occupied by Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) by 2020, and that it plans to transform the site into a 330-hectare “Central Park” with an emphasis on ecology, leisure and humanities.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Charles Lin (林欽榮) unveiled the plan at a forum in Taipei attended by government officials from Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan, as well as representatives of presidential candidates, to discuss the future of the airport, which participants said should be vacated and merged with Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
The plan involves linking a strip of land vacated by the Songshan airport on the southern bank of the Keelung River (基隆河), with river sections in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直) and Dawan (大灣) areas, which Lin said would make for a “wetland park” covering 162 hectares.
Photo: CNA
The park would benefit from its close proximity to the 170-hectare Taipei Expo Park (花博公園), where the Yuanshan natural landscape park is to be built after the city decided to relocate the Taipei City Museum to the former site of the Taipei City Council over concerns about potential damage the construction of the museum could cause local freshwater ecology and the nearby Yuanshan Archeological Site (圓山遺址).
Together, the Taipei Expo Park and the wetland park would serve as the city’s “Central Park,” where Taipei residents could spend leisure time and take part in recreational activities, Lin said.
A series of adjacent spaces have been designated along the south side of the park for the purpose of promoting culture in Taipei, pushing urban renewal projects and accommodating central government agencies should the need for relocation arise, Lin said.
Taipei Department of Urban Development Commissioner Lin Jou-min (林洲民) said the park would make for an ideal venue for outdoor movie screenings, concerts and live broadcasts of sports events, adding that the city plans to build a 23km circular light-rail system.
On why Songshan airport should merge with Taoyuan airport, Lin said that the annual passenger volume at Songshan airport has decreased rapidly since Taoyuan airport came into service in 1979, and that, except operating some flights to Japan and South Korea, it is now mainly responsible for domestic flights.
Songshan airport has just one runway, which limits its capacity to operate flights.
Due to overlapping airspace between the two airports, delays in arrivals and departures often occur, and a height restriction is imposed on nearby buildings to uphold flight safety, which hampers urban development, Lin said.
Reduced capacity in the wake of Songshan airport’s possible merger would be offset by the construction of Terminal Four at Taoyuan airport, which is estimated to add 5 million passengers to the facility’s annual passenger volume after its completion next year, Lin said.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智), who represented DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) at the forum, said Tsai is in favor of vacating Songshan airport by 2020.
Yao said the addition of Terminal Four would raise Taoyuan airport’s annual capacity to about 42 million in 2018, which would be enough to process the nation’s passenger volume, which totaled 41.91 million last year.
The capacity is set to increase further in 2020, to about 57 million, when Terminal Three is scheduled to begin operations, he said.
Yao said that the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) had been inefficienct in conducting work to build a third runway at Taoyuan airport, proposed in 2008, which he said has hampered the merger.
The KMT hopes to begin construction in 2020 and finish it in 2030, Yao said.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said that when the merger can be carried out would depend on when the runway and the terminal are completed, adding that his administration would establish two task forces to attend to related issues.
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