Definition of highway
The term “highway” is often mixed with “road”, and it refers to the facility on the land built for public transportation. In fact, the definition of road covers a wider range. All the pathways used by vehicles and pedestrians are all called roads. According to “ Road Traffic Management and Penalty Act”, the road refers to all highways, streets, lanes, alleys, squares, arcades, hallways, or other passageways for public use. However, “highway” is different from “road”, not only specific objects are required, but also design specifications shall be followed. According to “Highway Act”, it applies to national highways, provincial highways, city highways, county highways, district highways, country roads, special highways and any highway-related facilities.
Highway history in the Taiwan area
Highway construction is the basic infrastructure in a country, and it is closely related to regional economic development as well as national overall development. Since Japanese occupied Taiwan in the 21st year of the reign of the Guangxu Emperor, Qing dynasty (1895), they divided highway business into three departments, including engineering, transportation, and administration. Highway engineering was managed by Civil Engineering Section under Department of Mines and Industry at the Government-General of Taiwan while highway transportation belonged to Railway Branch under Department of Transportation at the Government-General of Taiwan. Automobile section was established to manage the operation of arterial highway, supervision of private vehicles, and supply of highway equipment. All the highway construction focused on military readiness and peasant workers and soldiers were grouped into brigades and regiments as well as set up a temporary Civil Engineering Branch to coordinate road-building work. Guidelines for Road Equipment was approved in 1900 and the important roads were classified into three levels. Level 1 was with road width more than 12.72 meters (7 houses), level 2 was more than 10.91 meters (6 houses), and level 3 was more than 9.09 meters (5 houses) (Japanese unit for road width was based on “house”; 1 house = 6 feet = 0.3030 meters). The standard for the weight carried on bridge was 8 tons in the west and 6 tons in the east. According to “Taiwan Designated Road Map” (equivalent to provincial highway today) in the 17th year of Shōwa Era (1942) and “Taiwan Provincial Highway Map” in 1946, the highway construction done by Japanese in around 50 years from 1895 to 1945 was only limited on Provincial Highway No. 1 and the engineering was simple and crude. . Taiwan was firebombed many times by the end of World War II because of Its important strategic location for Japanese military supply in south pacific Area. Most important highways were destroyed. After Taiwan restoration, highways in Taiwan were devastated and everything was waiting to be taken up. It was estimated that the routes could still be opened were around 40%. However, the government clearly realized that the recovery of highway transportation allowed no delay in order to stabilize people’s livelihood. On November 14, 1945, Public Engineering Department was established under Industrial Mining Department at former Chief Executive Officer to manage highway engineering all over the province. On May 16th, 1947, the Public Engineering Department was re-allocated to the management of Construction Department under Provincial Government due to the provincial policy reform. Taiwan Highway Bureau was established on August 1st, 1946 but highway engineering was still under the management of the Public Engineering Department. Until October 1st, 1949, the highway engineering in the province was consolidated to the Highway Bureau.
From February 1946, the maintenance of provincial highway was returned to the former Public Engineering Department and road working groups were organized according to regions and sections. Important bridge engineering on county roads was still managed by the former Public Engineering Department while the maintenance of minor county roads and country roads was still in charge by local county (city) government. In terms of the western line (which was Provincial Highway No. 1), only around 140 kilometers were with high-type pavement and the rest was with gravel pavement. There were still several dozens of long bridges waiting to be built. Other provincial highways, like the eastern line (which was Provincial Highway No. 9), Jianfeng Highway (from Jianshan to Fengyuan), and county highways & country roads were made do with whatever was available and only leveled the ground before paving it with gravels for military and public transportation. Duo to the floods on August 7, 1959 and Typhoon Shirley in 1960, highways all over the province were seriously damaged. Although the government invested a lot of capital and manpower for recue and repairing, the road condition on each highway was totally changed. Our Directorate General considered the huge changes on the road condition, and formally formulated “Highway Survey Plan” and “Highway Bridge Coding Method” in 1959. In July 1961, highway survey was conducted to check all the provincial, county, and country highways over in one go in order to re-organize the information of highways and establish highway registration system. In 1962, we published that the total mileage of highway in the Taiwan area is 14,508.5 kilometers and highway number route map was completed in 1964. Five times of total survey on highway (provincial highway) engineering facilities were held in 1975, 1983, 1996, 2004, and 2014.We carried out provincial highway GIS map maintenance and management mechanism according to the result of the survey and maintain data completeness and regular update. According to the information in early Dec. 2023, we have 9 national highways, 97 provincial highways (including 15 expressway), 158 city/county roads (including 5 in Penghu County), 2,248 district/country roads, and 35 special highways.