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Abstract
The Taipei City Government launched project of automated guideway transit system in the 1980s caused a conflict with the central government's metro project. This conflict drew the intervention of the US government, who invited American transportation consultants to integrate the two transit systems into one. The Brown Line became the only automated metro line of the Taipei Metro. Although the US government had hoped an American company would be the system provider for the Brown Line, Matra’s VAL256 won the contract. However, the VAL256 experienced fire and tire explosion accidents, leading to conflicts between Matra and the Taipei City Government. Matra withdrew all its technical supports to pressure Taipei to pay the down payment. Nonetheless, Taiwanese technical officials and engineers modified the system with flexible strategies making the Brown Line work smoothly without Matra’s technical support. Later, The Taiwanese technical officials invited Bombardier to provide its CITYFLO system and integrated it with the modified VAL256 into one system, avoiding paying a high price to Matra for the extension of the Brown Line. How the Brown Line became a hybrid metro system shows how technological hybridity can change the power relationship between technologically advanced countries such as France and “catching-up countries” such as Taiwan.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my thanks to the editors of EASTS and the two anonymous reviewers for their assistances and constructive comments. I also thank Michelle Hsieh, Kou-Hui Chang, Ching-Keng Liu, and the faculty members of the Institute of Sociology, NTHU for providing me insightful opinions and warm courages when I developed the concepts of technological hybridity. Special thanks to my interviewees for sharing their stories and professions with me. This article is derived from one of the chapters of my dissertation, and I would like to thank my supervisor, John Krige, for his inspiration and passion toward historian works. Finally, this article is in honor of Chyuan-Yuan Wu. Without him, I would not step on the road of writing the history of technology in Taiwan.
Notes
1 The Taiwanese tend to use the names of destinations or each line’s ending points to refer to the metro line in Taipei Metro. For example, Taiwanese would call the Red Line “Tamsui-Xinyi Line (淡⽔信義線)” instead of the “Red Line (紅線).” However, this kind of naming would confuse non-native Mandarin speakers and those unfamiliar with Taipei. Furthermore, all the metro lines have their extensive phases, and each phase has its own name. In order to avoid confusion, this article uses colors to refer to all the metro lines of Taipei Metro.
2 Véhicule Automatique Léger; “256” refers to the car’s width, 2560 mm. Matra, the French engineering group designing and manufacturing heavy industrial and defense products, developed the VAL system in the 1970s and built the first VAL system in Lille, France, during the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Lille’s VAL system began to provide a service in 1983, becoming one of the first automated guided transit systems. Siemens, the large German industrial group, merged with Matra’s transportation department in 2001.
3 Bombardier Inc. is the Canadian engineering group concentrating on transportation technology. It initiated its business in the 1930s as a snow coach manufacturer and became a company in 1942. Its products include automobile, business jet, and rail transportation equipment.
4 New Taipei City is the largest city in Taiwan with about 4 million people surrounding Taipei City. It was reformed as New Taipei City from Taipei County in 2010 due to the administration’s reformation of local governments.
5 The CEPD was the high-level institute directly belonging to the prime minister of the government, with power to determine Taiwan’s economic, industrial, and technological project within the Taiwanese government. Its earliest previous institute was the Council of the US Aid (CUSA), and it had enjoyed a semiautonomous status in the Taiwanese government because its financial resources came from US Aid and its affiliated foundation(s) instead of the budget of the Taiwanese government.
6 After the US terminated its official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, the US set the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) as its unofficial diplomatic representative in Taiwan.
7 In 1985 when the Preparatory Office of DORTS started its mission, the British Consultants were still the general consultants of the Taipei Metro project. However, again, the US pressured the Taiwanese government to reopen the bid for general consultation on the Taipei Metro as compensation for the trade imbalance between the US and Taiwan. Unsurprisingly, the American Transit Consultants (ATC), which was composed of the Bechtel Corporation, Parsons Brinckerhoff, and Kaiser Engineering, won the consulting contract in the reopened bid.
8 Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party.
9 Interview with TP01 (see appendix).
10 Interview with TP01.
11 The technical proposals from these companies are stored in the DORTS library in Taipei. The technical information in this section comes directly from them.
12 ABB Daimler Benz Transportation Daimler Chrysler Rail Systems, abbreviated as Adtranz, was a German-Swiss rail transportation manufacturer, and it was acquired by Bombardier in 2001.
13 Interview with TP03.
14 Interviews with TP01, TP02, and TP07.
15 Interviews with TP01, TP03, and TP07.
16 The DORTS is not just an institute dealing with administrative and management affairs about metro systems; it was the largest municipal-level government institute excepting police departments and school systems. It once had almost 2000 employees, and most of them were technical officials and engineers. Furthermore, according to my interviews with technical officials and engineers of the DORTS and contractors, the DORTS were working with the contractors instead of merely managing and supervising them.
17 The interview with TP07.
18 Interviews with TP01 and TP07.
19 Interviews with TP01, TP02, and TP07.
20 Guang Hua used to be a secondhand book market before the 1980s. In the 1980s, it became a market for personal computers, electronic parts, software, comic books, porn videos, and video games. Many products there, whether hardware or software, were pirated versions. There were also many preowned products.
21 Interview with TP07.
22 Interview with TP01.
23 Interview with TP07.
24 As shows, originally the TTC planned that the Songshan Airport would become one of the stations of the Brown Line in 1985, but this plan was once cancelled because the Taiwanese government was thinking of the possibility of demolishing the downtown airport. However, the Taiwanese government finally decided the Songshan Airport would be the downtown airport in the capital city, connecting other East Asian main cities’ downtown airports, such as Tokyo Haneda International Airport and Gimpo International Airport in Seoul.
25 Interviews with TP01, TP02, and TP07.
26 Interviews with TP01, TP02, and TP07.
27 Interviews with TP01 and TP02.
28 Interview with TP07.
29 The interview with TP10.
30 Interviews with TP02 and TP07.
31 Interview with TP07.
32 Interviews with TP01, TP02, and TP07.
33 The Yellow Line was open to the public in January 2020. It is also a metro line with an automated transit system. According to the DORTS’ plan, the Yellow Line will become a circle line connecting the outskirt of Taipei Metropolitan so that the extension will be a vital issue. If its extension plan is approved, the DORTS could directly contract the system provider, Hitachi Italy, under particular limitations rather than open a bid to all possible system providers.
34 Interview with TP01.
35 However, on 30 September 2021, Alstom won the contract to provide the system for the extensive sections of the Yellow Line, for which Hitachi Italy made the system. The system integration will happen again in Taipei Metro.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ling-Ming Huang
Ling-Ming Huang gained his Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Technology and Science, Georgia Institute of Technology in 2020. He now serves as the postdoctoral research fellow, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica.