Eco-friendly trains to connect north and south Taiwan

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 300-kilometer-per- hour commuter train system.

Passengers who travel on a fully loaded train will only use a sixth of the energy they would use if they drove alone in a car, and will release only one-ninth as much carbon dioxide, the main gas linked to global warming. Train users will also consume a little more than half the energy and release a quarter of the carbon dioxide as people who take the bus, according to the train system officials.
But the system’s enormous cost has made it controversial — $15 billion, or $650 for every man, woman and child on Taiwan. And a series of commercial disputes since the project began in 1980 has produced a remarkable hodgepodge: French and German train drivers who are allowed to speak only English with Taiwanese traffic controllers while operating Japanese bullet trains on tracks originally designed by British and French engineers.

Although many urban planners see systems like this one as a positive for the environment, Lee Schipper, the research director at Embarq, an environmental transport research group in Washington, warns that the system could eventually increase energy use, rather than saving it. That could happen, he said, if the ease of using the trains encourages people to move farther away from work.

International Herald Tribune