Thanks to Bureau of High Speed Rail, MOTC

Allen Hsiang-Ling Hu, Deputy Director General, Bureau of High Speed Rail, MOTC

Wu Shun-Long, Deputy Director, BHSR, MOTC

Young Cheng-Chung, Section Chief, BHSR, MOTC

Kuo-Jeng Rau, Fourth Division Director, BHSR, MOTC

Shih-Choib Fu, Director, BHSR, MOTC

Re: Thanks so much for your hospitality and exciting discussions

Dear Deputy Director Hu and Colleagues from BHSR:

Let me take this opportunity of a few tranquil moment in my life nowadays (namely the
one hour and forty minutes of high speed train ride from Tainan to Taipei) to thank
all of you for a truly exciting and information rich meeting at the headquarters in
Banqiao Station.

Although I obviously do not speak for my Texas High Speed Rail Corporation friends, I
cannot imagine that they are not equally excited about the meeting we had with you.

Our meeting with you dovetailed well with our meeting with the TaiwanHSRC folks (I am
using the full Taiwan in this acronym because otherwise it will be confused with the
Texas acronym which is the same…) The information flows very well from the morning
meeting to the afternoon meeting.

TaiwanHSRC’s folks are obviously profoundly concerned, as they should, with the
operation of the entire high speed rail system, which is proven to be a fundamental
service to a very high proportion of the 23 million people in Taiwan. Your office,
which is part of the government, is transparently not only be concerned about the day-
to-day operations of the system, but also with the economic implications of the system
as well as “transit related developments (TRD)!”

>From our discussion, I realized that the mandate of your office is beyond
transportation per se. Urban development, land development and other peripherals are
also very much part of your portfolios. The first time I became palpably aware of TRD
was when I saw right next to David Dean’s office in Dallas, a massive $500 million
creation of a new business conglomorate. I learned from David that without the Dallas
Area Rapid Transit (DART,) which is a regional light rail having a strategically
important station there, such a development would have been impossible.

Yesterday, with my own eyes, I saw the impressive and robust real estate and urban
business development of Banqiao, surrounding the HSR station. I am equally excited to
learn that this development from Deputy Director General Hu that it is also a TRD! All
this tells me that for a 21st century region, creating a well designed and viable
surface transportation system, especially one with high speed rail carefully
dovetailing with regular subway system, can have profound impact on economic
development.

All this points to the fact that there is some urgency to understand why surrounding
Tainan high speed rail station, the development has much room for improvement. I am
pleased to inform you that in NCKU, we have very strong groups of faculty in
transportation management, civil engineering and optimization studies, and last but
not least urban planning and development. It would be interesting for me as the Senior
Executive Vice President of NCKU to see whether my office could be the conduit to
strike up a collaboration to study this issue.

To initiate this possible collaboration, I like to formally this this opportunity to
invite Deputy Director General Hu to come to visit us in NCKU, and bestow some of your
wisdom and knowledge to NCKU’s communities.

Finally, I am sure that BHSR has gained much knowledge and wisdom in the past 18
years, the length of time Deputy Director General Hu has spent on the project. I think
such knowledge and wisdom are invaluable to the development of sustainable surface
transportation system in the 21st century world wide. I hope there will be ways where
Taiwan can benefit from having such important wisdom.

Warmest personal regards

Da Hsuan

Da Hsuan Feng

Senior Executive Vice President

National Cheng Kung University