Stung by criticism that its projections of high speed rail traffic in the 1990s were overly optimistic, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said Wednesday the projections were developed at a time when prevailing conditions were different. Former Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp. (THSRC) Chairwoman Nita Ing said in a recent interview with CommonWealth Magazine that passenger traffic estimates for the high speed rail line were overly optimistic to make it more appealing to investors. Transportation Minister Mao Chi-kuo responded Wednesday that projections generally differ from actual figures and that THSCR adopted one of five estimates generated by the government when it made its bid. Mao said that in the earliest stage of planning the high speed rail project, when the government was thinking of building the line on its own, a French consultant it hired estimated the line would carry an average of 180,000 passengers per day. Considering, however, that the domestic Taipei Songshan Airport was catering to 15 million passengers a year at the time, many of whom were flying between Taipei and Kaohsiung, the government asked four other consultants to also provide passenger estimates. The forecast by the French consultant eventually turned out to be the most conservative, with the other consultants projecting passenger traffic at up to 360,000 passengers on average per day, Mao said. All five projections were provided to bidders for the system, and THSRC adopted the 180,000 per day figure after taking into account conditions in 1997. Actual passenger traffic, however, has lagged far behind the original forecasts, at around 80,000 passengers per day, making it difficult for THSRC to cover the high debt and interest payment burden that came with building the high speed rail line. 