Resident Pattaya ex-pat Stuart Saunders has been awarded the “Highly Commended Engineering Design of the Year” award at the 8th Metro World Summit (2013) in Shanghai, based on the design of his ‘YangMingShan MRT Line’ for Taipei, Taiwan.
This is the latest award won by Stuart’s EsDesign company. Stuart has been an inventor since aged 13 with a radical steam engine. He was awarded Queensland Inventor of the Year in 1982 with his wireless stereo system and designed the revolutionary “Credit Card” dental floss, which he now produces in Pattaya.
Stuart poses in front of the plan for the YangMingShan MRT Line, with Johnson Lee, President of AMACorp. in Taipei.
The main features of the award winning ‘YangMIngShan MRT Line’ design are:
• A 40 km long elevated circle line, servicing Taipei City and Taipei County.
• Especially servicing the access starved Northern Suburbs of Tien Mou and YangMingShan.
• A ‘circle line’ means that all sections can be useful and profitable.
• Possible use of Maglev Technology to allow 24/7 operation with little down time. Non contact magnetic suspension has very low wear, requiring little maintenance.
• Access to high speed overnight ferries from Taipei to Shang Hai and to Nagasaki, uniting the public transport systems of these three countries.
The cost is estimated to be $B8.75 including YangMingShan Station, or $B8.2 without.
The plan is for YangMingShan Station, 200 meters deep inside YangMingShan Mountain, and connected to the village above by high speed elevators. This would reduce travelling time to the nearest suburb to 3 minutes from 20, and to Taipei City to 5 – 12 minutes, from one hour now.
If it were built, YangMingShan MRT Line could transform Taipei into one of the most convenient cities, and one of the best cities on the planet to live in, reducing pollution in the Taipei basin by 3,000 tonnes per day.
Stuart is an Australian, but has been an Asiaphile since 1984 when he emigrated to Taiwan, staying there till 2002. However he found that labor costs were going up and began to search for another Asian country to use as his base. He had knowledge of Thailand, having been doing visa runs to here from Taiwan. He had also been employing Thai women in his business, and was impressed with their work ethic. Those factors brought him to Thailand, and Pattaya in particular. He initially had some misgivings about Pattaya, but now is a great promoter of our tourist city.
He has plans for a Pattaya by-pass which would result in travel from the Floating Market to Number 7 freeway taking five minutes only. He hopes that this design, which would be as beneficial to Pattaya as his award winning design has been for Taipei, will be taken seriously by Pattaya’s City Hall.
