Reforestation Plots

Taiwan Sugar, a government-owned company, has given over some of its land to reforestation. Here are photos of one such patch in Tainan County. The trees seem to be doing well. Note the plastic sheeting covering the ground. The reforestation plot borders an established forest.

Where Tainan HSR Station Should Have Been

I took this photo from the platform of Sinshih TRA Station in Tainan County. As you can see, the high-speed railway crosses the old TRA line about 100 meters southeast of the platform. To me, this would have been an excellent place for Tainan's HSR station. Passengers would be able to transfer from HSR to TRA to go to downtown Tainan, quicker and better for the environment than the current 35-minute bus journey. Also, they'd be a lot nearer Yongkang - the biggest city in Tainan County - and the science park, which is the destination of many business travelers.

There are plans to link Tainan HSR station with the city by light-rail. Ground has yet to be broken, however.

Solar-Powered Bridge

Here are some photos of a newish bridge in Sinshih, Tainan County. It's not a bad-looking piece of architecture, and it does help reduce the jams around a particular chokepoint a few hundred meters, which should save time and gasoline.

The bridge has four banks of photovoltaic cells; one set is visible in the photo on the right. Two sets have missing cells. I don't know if they were removed for maintenance, or stolen.

Whether the electricity is used on site, or fed into the general grid, is something I'd like to know. Net metering (also known as FIT) already happens in Taiwan on a small scale.

Pointless Road Widening

Near where I live there are a lot of narrow roads, used only by farmers going to their fields and cyclists out exercising. Recently, some of them have been widened for no apparent reason. The one pictured here is typical: The bed of wildflowers, grasses and weeds that used to be alongside the road, between its and the irrigation ditch on the right, has been sealed under asphalt. It wasn't a biodiversity hotspot by any stretch, but it was better than adding non-reflective, heat-absorbing blacktop...

Why has this been done? Not so the road can handle more vehicles. Traffic of the four-wheeled kind is very light indeed. To ease access to houses? Well, the widened section doesn't even reach the one and only house here.

The fact they've done some but not all of the road, and haven't even gone as far as the house, suggests there were budget issues. Government units can award contracts without a competitive tender if the contract is below a certain amount. Did someone in the township government decide this needed to be done, to help a friend out? Couldn't they have thought of something more useful? Pork barrelling is covering this island with concrete.

Green(ish) Buildings In My Neighborhood

The building on the right is the Yang Kuei Memorial Literature Museum, a newish cultural facility about three kilometers from my home. It has a handful of green features: The site has about 30 young trees; rather than slather blacktop all over the site, they've use small square stones for the parking area (this allows rainwater to permeate into the ground naturally, reducing the risk of flooding); and parts of the exterior are covered with wooden slats, which should reduce heat gain on sunny days. I've no idea if the stones used around the building were retrieved from a derelict site or quarried. Like most Taiwanese buildings, the structure is basically concrete, and there's no rainwater harvesting or solar-energy system.

The other building is a police station. It too has a water-permeable parking area; the grass growing between the slabs is certainly more attractive than standard asphalt. Also, there are solar thermal panels on the roof (just about visible in the photo) for hot water - a good idea, as policemen often shower at the end of a shift.

According to this article in the government's Taiwan Journal, the majority of green buildings in Taiwan were built by the public sector. It's Part 2 of a two-part report; Part 1 is here.