The Hybrid Metro: The Brown Line of the Taipei Metro and Technological Hybridity

Abstract

Abstract The Taipei City Government launched project of automated guideway transit system in the 1980s caused a conflict with the central government's metro project. This conflict drew the intervention of the US government, who invited American transportation consultants to integrate the two transit systems into one. The Brown Line became the only automated metro line of the Taipei Metro. Although the US government had hoped an American company would be the system provider for the Brown Line, Matra’s VAL256 won the contract. However, the VAL256 experienced fire and tire explosion accidents, leading to conflicts between Matra and the Taipei City Government. Matra withdrew all its technical supports to pressure Taipei to pay the down payment. Nonetheless, Taiwanese technical officials and engineers modified the system with flexible strategies making the Brown Line work smoothly without Matra’s technical support. Later, The Taiwanese technical officials invited Bombardier to provide its CITYFLO system and integrated it with the modified VAL256 into one system, avoiding paying a high price to Matra for the extension of the Brown Line. How the Brown Line became a hybrid metro system shows how technological hybridity can change the power relationship between technologically advanced countries such as France and “catching-up countries” such as Taiwan.