The Railway Bureau will hold three seminars on a plan to extend Taiwan’s high speed rail (HSR) line to Yilan County to address environmental concerns and solicit public opinion on the project.

The bureau said Sunday that the seminars, which are required as part of the project’s environmental impact assessment (EIA), will be held in Taipei and New Taipei on Monday and in Yilan on Tuesday.

The project, aimed at improving transportation in northeastern Taiwan, will extend the HSR network from Nangang Station in Taipei to a new railway station built 350 meters south of the Yilan County Government complex.

At present, the fastest train between Taipei and Yilan City takes about an hour but that will be shortened to 19 minutes if the high-speed rail plan is brought to fruition.

The vast majority of the route, however, will use tunnels to cut through the mountains that separate the Greater Taipei area from Yilan County, presenting both a construction and environmental challenge.

According to the original plan, an EIA and detailed designs were to be completed between 2022 and 2024, while construction on the extension could begin as early as 2025 and would be completed by 2036.

A meeting in August that brought the first EIA to an end concluded, however, that a second EIA would be needed due to the project’s significant environmental impact, before which the bureau must hold seminars and public hearings, and collect more information and conduct more on-site evaluations.

According to the August EIA, the planned HSR route will pass habitats of more than 20 endangered species, including civets, pangolins, Taiwan blue pheasants, grey-faced buzzards, black-naped orioles, crab-eating mongooses, and emerald green treefrogs.

The EIA also touched on concerns over how to handle the roughly 6 million cubic meters of material that will be excavated during the construction process, as it will not only affect the endangered species but change the ecosystem in the region.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel