Taiwan to seal 1,000 wells to save high-speed rail

Taiwan will spend about $1.8 billion to seal off nearly 1,000 wells over the next 10 years to save its high-speed rail, which has been threatened by subsidence, an official said Tuesday. The project will significantly reduce the rate of subsidence along a stretch of rail in central Taiwan due to excessive draining of ground waters, said an official at the Public Construction Commission. The 345-kilometre (207-mile) system using Japanese bullet-train technology is billed as one of Taiwan's largest privately funded transport projects, with an estimated cost of $15 billion. However, Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp incurred about $2 billion in losses, or roughly two thirds of its capitalisation, three years after the system went into operation in 2007. Last year, the company secured new funding of $12 billion -- the biggest syndicated loan in Taiwan history -- as part of efforts to pay off earlier loans. A build-operate-transfer formula adopted for the railway charged the corporation with constructing and running the line for 35 years before handing it to the government.