Abstract
Transport in Taiwan is characterized as highly motorized private transport with motorcycle in high dense CBD. Under such situation, the first ever LRT project in Taiwan has been approved in the southern port city Kaohsiung in December 2012, and the first phase of LRT is expected to complete within 2016. This study aims at finding the project promotional factors and the issues faced in the process between project planning and tendering.
As a result of literature research and interview survey to the project related persons in the central and local government in Taiwan, it was found that the major issues are “Route Planning”, “Project Evaluation Process”, “Perception Gap”, “Change in Investment Environment” and “Consensus Building with Residents”. Kaohsiung City Government considered that the project is realized by Public-Private Partnership scheme; however, it was not realized due to the external environment such as global financial crisis in 2008 and the deceleration of Japanese economy by Tsunami disaster in Japan. Under such situation, the construction work was successfully started in 2012. One of the reason why it could proceed to ground breaking is to effectively utilize the circular disused railway space. Moreover, Kaohsiung built the consensus by continued and persistent dialogue with stakeholders, although most stakeholders were opposed to the project at the beginning of the project.
Several lessons learned are obtained from Kaohsiung LRT project, and these experience and knowledge could be adopted to other Asian countries where highly densed and highly motorized.
