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Taiwan High Speed Rail turns down quake alert system

• Publication Date：03/08/2010
• Source： China Times

Following last week’s minor derailment of a high-speed train carriage during the magnitude-6.4 temblor that struck southern Taiwan, officials met to discuss the railway’s earthquake safety system.

Ju Hsu, director-general of the Bureau of High Speed Rail under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, confirmed March 7 that his bureau had invited Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp. officials to a meeting to discuss the feasibility of adopting the Urgent Earthquake Detection and Alarm System used for Japan’s bullet train network.

However, the THSRC expressed opposition to setting up the system designed to enable automatic braking of bullet trains during earthquakes, for Taiwan’s high-speed railway, Ju said.

The derailment of a high-speed train heading northbound from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung City occurred as a result of the train not being able to brake in time when the quake hit March 4. The temblor was centered near the rural township of Jiaxian in Kaohsiung County.

According to Ju, the THSRC officials are against adopting the Japanese system because they think there should definitely “be a distance” between the earthquake warning system and the high speed railway in order to ensure adequate warning time in the event of a quake.

In addition, they believe that as Taiwan’s earthquake database is incomplete, this affects assessments of the locations of temblors’ epicenters and would undermine the ability of such an early warning system to perform its functions properly, Ju noted.

Ou Chin-der, chairman of the THSRC, pointed out that the installations of Taiwan’s and Japan’s high-speed rail networks are not identical and that there is no need to adopt the Japan bullet train system’s earthquake reporting and warning systems.

Under the current system used in Taiwan, he continued, high-speed trains are able to safely glide to a stop during earthquakes, limiting potential casualties in such events. “This recent earthquake caused damage to high speed trains and rails, but all the passengers made it safely,” Ou stressed.

Following the devastating magnitude-7.6 temblor that struck the central county of Nantou on Sept. 21, 1999, a comprehensive re-evaluation of the planned high-speed railway’s earthquake resistance features was carried out. An additional NT$40 billion (US$1.25 billion) to NT$50 billion was then spent on improving the system’s ability to withstand temblors with an intensity of up to 7.

However, last week’s train carriage derailment occurred despite the fact that the temblor only registered a maximum intensity of 6.4 in some areas.

Following the September 1999 earthquake that killed thousands and caused billions of NT dollars in damage, many railway engineering experts advocated the adoption of an earthquake warning system along the lines of the Japanese system.

However, the Taiwan high-speed railway builders opted instead to use a European designed earthquake warning system in which sensors are installed at points along the railway line.

Lan Zheng-peng, a former senior assistant researcher at the National Policy Foundation, a local think tank, issued a report shortly after the high-speed railway system began operating in 2007.

In the report, Lan noted that adopting the Japanese system would provide 6.5 seconds of response time in the event of a temblor centered 50 kilometers away from the rail line. This would allow sufficient time for the computer system to determine the quake’s magnitude and automatically initiate the braking system and shut the power down if necessary.

As the system was not adopted for Taiwan’s high-speed rail, the reaction time of train operators is of special importance, Lan said. However, seed instructors who train THSRC operators all come from France and Germany, where quakes do not occur, and have little familiarity with earthquake response matters.

Lan claimed that having an adequate earthquake warning system in place is essential as the high-speed rail line, 75 percent of which is elevated, passes three particularly active fault lines in the counties of Miaoli, Chiayi and Tainan, thereby raising the probability of the railway being affected by temblors.

The THSRC said earthquake sensors have been placed at intervals of 5-10 km along the track that are linked up with the central disaster alert system and the Central Weather Bureau’s Seismological Center.

However, Ju noted that the CWB’s practice is to first carry out assessments before sending earthquake alerts to the high-speed railway. He said this delay affects the amount of time it takes for the high-speed trains to react to the situation. (SB)