Taipei City Government

Mayor Ko Wen-je attended the contract-signing ceremony for the first major transit-oriented development (TOD) project at MRT Shilin Station on May 19.

During his address, he pointed out that the day marks an important milestone for city hall. As the City’s first TOD project, Taipei City Government will do its best to ensure the endeavor’s success.

Ko explained that TOD is urban planning focused around the key aspect of public transportation. In fact, a quick look through Taipei’s mass transit system development history over the past 3 decades will indicate 3 areas which require improvements. These include TOD, commercialization, and industrialization.

He believes that joint train station co-development projects should host malls instead of housing units. That’s why he sees something wrong with the logic of past joint development projects involving MRT stations.

According to the mayor, Taipei’s grand scheme for traffic planning is subdivided into three phases: the bottom layer is MRT; next come the buses, and the top layer is walking and YouBike. This structure shows that the metro system forms an important foundation of the city’s transportation network, so the whole urban planning will have to be redesigned with transportation in mind. With MRT being the backbone of Taipei’s public transportation, we need to redesign our city with train stations at its core.

TOD is not a complicated concept, as Japan has already shown through its infrastructure layout. For Taipei, it needs a successful example; and that is why the City selected MRT Shilin Station, which is the hub for both the Red line and the future Circular Line North. As a station located around rich cultural and tourism resources such as Shilin Night Market and National Palace Museum, the city government is confident of the success with help from outstanding private sector partners.

The mayor also shed light on future projects, including the second and third TOD undertakings at MRT Jiantan Station and MRT Jianan Road Station. The city government expects to invest roughly NT$200 billion in implementing urban development scheme centered on the Circular Line over the next decade.

The new hub complex at MRT Shilin Station is slated for completion in 2024, with operations starting by the end of the same year.