National Highways: From MacArthur Freeway to Hsuehshan Tunnel, Fifty Years of Power and Speed on Taiwan's Expressways

At a Glance in 30 Seconds
Taiwan's first "expressway" was the MacArthur Freeway, which opened in 1964 at just 23 kilometers and was retired in 1977 after the Sun Yat-sen Freeway was completed¹. The Sun Yat-sen Freeway (National Highway No. 1), begun in 1971 and fully completed in 1978, was the first and largest of Chiang Ching-kuo's Ten Major Construction Projects. It was postwar Taiwan's first large-scale engineering mobilization, its 374 kilometers shrinking the journey from Keelung to Kaohsiung to a single day²³. The Formosa Freeway (National Highway No. 3), initiated in the 1990s, formed the "twin freeway" backbone. The Hsuehshan Tunnel, which opened in 2006 at 12.9 kilometers, became the world's fifth-longest highway tunnel at the time, after 15 years of excavation⁴⁵. At the end of 2013, distance-based ETC tolling was fully implemented, the toll-collector system consigned to history—yet leaving behind a contentious chapter involving Far Eastern Electronic Toll Control and a Control Yuan corrective ruling⁶⁷. Today Taiwan's national highways span over 1,000 kilometers, one of the island's few public works that everyone uses daily yet few truly understand in historical depth⁸.

A Postwar History Written in Asphalt

If any single infrastructure project could encapsulate postwar Taiwan, it would be the national highway system.

It was never just about engineering: behind it lay the withdrawal of U.S. aid in the 1960s, the "self-reliance" narrative forged amid the 1970s oil crisis and diplomatic setbacks, the infrastructure competition before the first party turnover in the 1990s, logistics upgrades following WTO accession in the 2000s, and the 2010s tug-of-war between public and private sectors over a single eTag sticker²⁶⁹.

Every stretch of road is a fingerprint of its era.

The MacArthur Freeway: The Forgotten First

Taiwanese people habitually call the Sun Yat-sen Freeway "the first freeway," but strictly speaking, the "MacArthur Freeway" (Provincial Highway 5A), which opened in 1964 connecting Taipei and Keelung, was the true first. At 23.4 kilometers, four lanes, and a design speed of 80 km/h, it was the ceiling of Taiwan's road engineering at the time, built with U.S. aid support and named after the Korean War general Douglas MacArthur¹⁹.

After the Sun Yat-sen Freeway's Keelung–Taipei segment opened in 1977, the MacArthur Freeway was absorbed into the general provincial highway system and downgraded to an "urban road." Its fate foreshadowed something that would play out for fifty years: in Taiwan, "provincial highways" get consumed by the higher-status "national highways"—a hierarchy game with no end¹³.

The Sun Yat-sen Freeway: First of the Ten Major Projects

On August 14, 1971, construction of the Sun Yat-sen Freeway began.

It was the first and largest of Chiang Ching-kuo's Ten Major Construction Projects. Designed to run from Keelung to Kaohsiung, 373 kilometers, four lanes, the completion date was politically set for October 31, 1978—Chiang Kai-shek's birthday—and the road was named the "Sun Yat-sen Freeway"²³¹⁰.

The difficulty of the project remains staggering even by today's standards: Taiwan had no freeway design standards at the time. The engineering team built and translated Japanese and American specifications simultaneously; many bridge and embankment designs were created "from scratch"¹⁰. The Zhongsha Bridge, Yangmei Slope, and Houlong mudstone section each have their own engineering stories. In the oral history volume The Great Way Forward compiled by the Freeway Bureau, engineers from that era recalled: "We weren't building a road—we were learning how to build a road."¹⁰

💡 Did You Know?
The Sun Yat-sen Freeway was originally planned as an "at-grade crossing" design, not a true closed system. It was only changed mid-construction to a fully closed, grade-separated "true freeway" standard—meaning many sections were redesigned after construction had already begun, an extremely rare case of "changing specifications while running" in engineering history⁴¹⁰.

From First-Generation to Third-Generation Highways

The Freeway Bureau itself divides highway development into three generations[^4]:

1. First Generation (1971–1990) — Represented by the Sun Yat-sen Freeway, designed around the concept of "north-south corridor, shortest connection," with routes kept as straight as possible and routed around urban areas
2. Second Generation (1990–2004) — Represented by the Formosa Freeway (National Highway No. 3), incorporating "east-west" National Highways 6, 8, and 10 to form a grid network, with design considerations for environmental impact and urban planning integration
3. Third Generation (2004–present) — Represented by National Highway No. 5 (Chiang Wei-shui Freeway), with engineering focus shifting to "overcoming terrain"—the Hsuehshan Tunnel, the direct Yilan line, and the Wuyang Elevated Expressway are the signature works of this generation⁴⁵

Each generation carried different political logic: the first was an authoritarian regime's showcase project; the second was a product of coordination between local factions and the central government during democratization; the third was an era in which "every meter of road had to be explained to the public" under the environmental impact assessment regime.

The Formosa Freeway: The Mocked "Political Road"

The National Highway No. 3 (Formosa Freeway), planned in the 1990s, was once ridiculed in public opinion as a "political road"—the reasoning being that its route wound along foothills, bypassed many densely populated areas, and its interchange density was seen as "catering to local legislators"¹¹¹².

But after its full completion in 2004, the Formosa Freeway took on one-third of the western corridor's traffic volume, forming a "twin freeway" diversion with the Sun Yat-sen Freeway and becoming one of the two most important backbones of Taiwan's logistics system today. The political criticism of the years past was gradually digested by time into an engineering virtue of "risk diversification."

📝 Curator's Note
The greatest engineering significance of the Formosa Freeway lies not in the road itself, but in how it "forced" Taiwan's designers to confront hillside engineering: cutting through the Linkou terrace, traversing the Bagua mountain range, and viaducts over the Ailiao River valley in Pingtung—experience that was later applied to the Hsuehshan Tunnel and the reconstruction of the Southern Cross-Island Highway.

The Hsuehshan Tunnel: The Price of Being the World's Fifth Longest

If the national highway network has a "most dramatic" chapter, it is surely the Hsuehshan Tunnel.

Construction began in 1991 with an original completion target of 1998, but it did not officially open until 2006—eight years behind schedule, with the budget multiplied several times over⁵¹³. The Hsuehshan mountain range is a geological "fractured zone + high groundwater pressure + hard rock interlaced with weak layers"—all three cardinal sins of tunnel engineering present at once. During construction, there were repeated massive water inflows and collapses, 25 worker casualties, and the TBM (tunnel boring machine) was even trapped inside the mountain and could not be extracted⁵¹³.

At the time of its opening, the Hsuehshan Tunnel's 12.9 kilometers made it the world's fifth-longest and Asia's second-longest highway tunnel, and it remains a benchmark in Taiwan's engineering history—as well as a warning: in the cracks of Taiwan's tectonic plates, no kilometer of tunnel is a problem that money alone can solve⁵¹³.

ETC: A Public War Over a Single Sticker

If the Hsuehshan Tunnel was a "war of engineering," then ETC was a "war of institutions."

In 2006, the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system was launched on the freeway for the first time, with Far Eastern Electronic Toll Control (FarEon) obtaining a 20-year concession under a BOT model. The initial OBU infrared in-vehicle units saw chronically low adoption rates. On December 30, 2013, the freeway fully implemented "electronic distance-based tolling," and manual toll booths passed into history⁶¹⁴, with eTag stickers replacing the old toll tickets and toll collectors.

The transition period was chaotic: early operation saw duplicate charges, sensor failures, gantry billing errors, and more. A FarEon spokesperson's remark—"This is a destiny eTag must face"—ignited public outrage¹⁵. In July 2014, the Control Yuan passed a corrective ruling, sharply rebuking the Ministry of Transportation and the Freeway Bureau for being "subordinate to the contractor" and for unclear contractual rights and responsibilities⁷. But in April of the same year, an audit committee spot-checked 2.8 million transactions and found only 5 errors. Once the system stabilized, Taiwan's full-corridor distance-based ETC also became one of the few successful cases internationally¹⁶¹⁷.

⚠️ Contested Perspective
A 2024 report by the National Policy Foundation pointed out that although Taiwan's ETC is internationally regarded as a "first success story," the BOT contract handed the core database of the national highway network's tolling to a single private company, leaving a structural problem of difficult reverse oversight—whether this "success" belongs to the government or to the contractor remains a dispute without resolution to this day¹⁷.

Freeway Service Areas: A Taiwanese-Style Public Space

Few countries have turned freeway service areas into "destinations" the way Taiwan has.

Qingshui, Xihu, Dongshan, Hukou—in the memories of Taiwanese people, these names are not just "places to use the restroom" but relay stations on junior high graduation trips, meal stops for long-haul drivers, and showrooms for local specialty gifts. Taiwan's freeway service area commercialization model (OT outsourced operation, introduction of local products) differs from the "pure rest stop" design of most countries. It is a Taiwanese-style public space co-created by the Freeway Bureau and private businesses⁸¹⁸.

A Network Still Growing

As of the end of 2024, Taiwan's national highway network consists of 10 routes spanning over 1,000 kilometers⁸. New projects are still underway: the Wugu–Yangmei widening of National Highway No. 1, the extension of National Highway No. 2 to Provincial Highway 61, and the planning of National Highway No. 7 (Kaohsiung Eastern Outer Ring)—these are no longer propositions of "north-south connectivity" but a new generation of issues around "metropolitan congestion relief" and "passenger-freight separation"⁴¹⁹²⁰.

What a Road Can Tell You

Building a highway requires more than money—it requires a society willing to place a bet on the future.

The Sun Yat-sen Freeway bet that "the western corridor would become the heart of manufacturing"—later confirmed. The Formosa Freeway bet that "twin backbones would diversify risk"—also confirmed. The Hsuehshan Tunnel bet that "eastern and western Taiwan would finally be connected"—the year it opened, Yilan property prices immediately doubled, triggering a wave of migration. ETC bet that "full-corridor distance-based fairness" was achievable—it was achieved, but at the cost of institutional trust.

The next time you're stuck in traffic on the freeway, glance at the milepost by the roadside. Those are not just kilometer markers—they are the accumulation of every collective decision Taiwan has made over fifty years.

Further Reading

• Ten Major Construction Projects — The largest postwar infrastructure program to which the Sun Yat-sen Freeway belonged
• Hsuehshan Tunnel — The most difficult single structure in Taiwan's engineering history
• ETC Electronic Toll Collection — A public-private tug-of-war that changed toll-paying habits

References