Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration said in a statement Tuesday it selected Nomura Research Institute Ltd. (4307.TO) as the planning consultant for its development plan for Taoyuan International Airport.

The aviation regulator signed a contract with Nomura Research

don't know what this means to TPE flyers.
I understand that TPE is an relatively old airport comparing to HKG, SIN, BKK, NRT, ICN, and etc. But can this development help travelers?
Anyway, I guess we have to start from somewhere.

Well i believe its about redoing T1 and talking about T3 which is planned and I have heard some inside info about.

Dare we hope for a new BR lounge?

Anyway, if the TPE administrators visited their not-too-distant neighbour ICN, they would probably feel a little inferior with their facility.

BR does not operate from Terminal 1, so I would not expect a new lounge from BR.

THe BR lounge in ICN is awful

Moving forward the snail-like construction for train service from downtown to the airport would be a lot more useful for most travelers than anything they can do to the airport itself.

I thought T2 was perfectly fine. Not the architectural monument that HKG or ICN is, but comfortable, pleasant, and functional. T1, though, was old, dreary, not well-laid-out, and in much need of renovation. Sort of like T1 at Changi, only worse. Changi, though, is getting the facelift it needs. It would be nice for T1 TPE to get the same.

my exact thoughts too.But now that the station at the domestic airport is up,
dare we hope that the snail might evolute to a tortoise? (bigger sized, maybe a tad faster.)

Don't hold your breath -- the line's not even scheduled to open until 2013, and the last bit to Taipei Station won't open until 2014 at best. And remember that these are all estimates, it took them from 1998 to 2006 just to get construction started...

Yeah it was while all the politicians lined their pockets selling land that they bought knowing they could send the HSR through it and sell it back to the Government, I mean who puts a high speed station so far away from the key locations without making sure a shed load of money gets transferred to decision makers.

2 Examples

Aiport - Taoyuan
Taichung - Chang Hua

Personally speaking, while the train will be much nicer than the buses, I don't forsee it cutting down on travel time for some people who are travelling to Taoyuan Airport from non-Central Taipei. For example, I recently travelled to the airport from Tianmu and part of the biggest hassle is getting to Taipei Main in order to catch the airport bus. Sadly, that hassle will still exist for many people. The bus journey time is about 45 minutes while the proposed journey time on the MRT is 35 minutes. All that money spent for ten minutes of time savings and that's only if you catch an express train. If not, you're looking at about an hour to get out there.

I agree about T2 and was actually pleasantly surprised once I went through immigration on my way out of the country. T1, however, is horrendous, whether arriving or departing. It looks the same as when I lived there about twenty years ago.

I agree. It is so ridiculous to spend billions on dollars and a great new system that makes you have to catch a bus to the airport (most likely one of the most popular destinations) or waste another half hour on a bus (in optimal traffic conditions) getting from the station to town at Hsinchu. We'll see when THSR finally arrives in Kaohsiung and not just Zuoying.

The good news is that the other end of the Taipei-airport link is supposed to connect to the THSR Taoyuan station as well, which will make transfers easier. (Although I fully agree that going directly through the airport would have been much better.)

They haven't even started building this, right? I don't see this moving forward anytime soon with both THSRC and Kaohsiung City near bankruptcy.

I do think TPE airport needs better transportation to city central (or MRT) during peak time. During non-peak time the current bus route / time works fine to me.