Every morning, some of the world’s top chip engineers can be found stuck in traffic on Kumamoto Prefecture’s Route 30, as vehicles carrying heavy machinery and thousands of workers inch toward what will soon become Japan’s most-advanced chip hub when Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s new factory goes online next year.
Billions of dollars are pouring into Kikuyo in semiconductor-related subsidies, converting fields of cabbages, daikon and carrots into huge factories, lifting land prices and bringing new jobs. But the flood of investment and the influx of workers are also overwhelming the farm town of 43,000, causing chronic gridlock, shortages in housing and services, and stretching commute times to the chip industrial park to 90 minutes or more.
"The traffic is so bad,” said resident Miki Ikeda. "And staffing shortages are everywhere. An elementary school built just two years ago doesn’t have enough classrooms; day cares don’t have enough teachers; the town hall — which is supposed to make sure everything is running — doesn’t have enough people to deal with the problem.”