Democratic Progressive Party Taipei mayoral candidate Puma Shen attended a September 23 residents' forum on Nvidia's planned move into the Beitou-Shilin Technology Park, where local representatives raised concerns about traffic. The session, which Liberty Times reported was organised by the Beitou Cultural Foundation under the title "The Challenges and Opportunities of Nvidia's Move into Beitou-Shilin," centred on a project expected to bring a large influx of workers.
What did residents raise? Beitou Cultural Foundation chairman Wang Shih-yeh said residents very much welcome Nvidia's arrival but worry about traffic problems like those produced around the Neihu Technology Park, PTS reported. One resident representative said that on the way over that morning, a 500-metre stretch of Shipai Road took more than 15 minutes in traffic. With two major hospitals in the area and ambulances needing to get in and out, the representative asked whether more people coming and going would bring a repeat of the "Neihu traffic nightmare." Residents' other concerns included road-system planning, the natural environment, environmental resilience and energy security, as well as industry, housing justice and urban-renewal measures.
What did Shen propose? Shen said challenges in the power grid, talent retention, logistics and smart systems need to be resolved for Nvidia's move to the park, PTS reported. "The power grid problem has to be solved, which is why we have been stressing substations from the start," he said, adding that the shape of the park's talent-cultivation and sandbox mechanisms, its logistics, smart systems and unmanned operations were all very important. Shen also called for bringing in TTA and think tanks to encourage talent to return, Liberty Times reported.
What has the city said? The Nvidia project has become a focus of exchanges in the Taipei mayoral race, and Mayor Chiang Wan-an, who PTS reported regards the move as one of his major achievements, said the city would link the Nangang Software Park, the Neihu Technology Park and Beitou-Shilin into a Taipei technology corridor. "We all hope the Taipei technology corridor will become a very important engine leading the development of the AI technology industry in Taipei and even Taiwan as a whole," he said. For the area around the park, he said work was already under way on road traffic, short-term shuttle buses, smart traffic and medium- to long-term MRT network planning, and that the arrival of related industries was moving ahead actively and steadily.
