Taipei City has decided that the Maokong Gondola, closed since Oct. 1, 2008, is safe to reopen sometime soon, now that the eroded T16-1 support pillar has been relocated. Months of investigation by experts resulted in numerous suggestions, although only three “deficiencies” were publicly mentioned last week.
Maokong Gondola inspection committee chief Lin Jyh-dong (林志棟) said clearer instructions were needed on where passengers could pick up boarding numbers and how to line up; trash around stations needed to be picked up and the system’s standard operating procedures for emergencies needed a review.
It’s hard to believe that better queue management and less trash is really all that is needed before the gondola can begin running again.
Taipei residents were already concerned about the system’s 25 pillars, so recent news that the system’s Taipei Zoo Station had been built over an abandoned coal mine simply reinforced the impression that political considerations outweighed geological and ecological ones in the rush to construct the system.
The head of the Chinese Union of Professional Civil Engineer Associations, James Yu (余烈) tried to be reassuring last week, but his words fell flat. An inspection by association members concluded the gondola was “absolutely safe,” he said, unless there was a typhoon or torrential rain, before adding that no design could be 100 percent perfect. His analogy between the gondola system and a premature baby who requires intensive medical care to survive didn’t help.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) promised the system would not reopen until it was clearly “safe.” While Hau gave no timetable — except to say “the spring” — his Department of Transportation chief Luo Shiaw-shyan (羅孝賢) said it was likely to reopen before Hau left on a trip at the end of this month.
Perhaps the “we care about safety” message is not really meant for Taipei residents — but for the hordes of tourists, Chinese or otherwise, that the city government is trying to entice here, especially the thousands expected to descend, come November, for the five-month long International Flora Expo.
However, even the most optimistic might believe that the gondola system needs a complete rethink, given the wave of breakdowns in its first few months that made riding the glitch-prone Wenshan-Neihu MRT line look like a walk in the park. Perhaps we’re meant to feel grateful that the city was willing to shut down the gondola at all, as it has proven unwilling to do the same for the Wen-Hu line.
These transportation nightmares are enough to make one feel a bit sorry for Hau, who inherited them from his predecessor, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). It’s too bad Hau didn’t see the writing on the wall when he and Ma got stuck in a gondola cabin on the system’s opening day because of a faulty door.
Hau has done all he can to shield Ma from blame, because that’s what loyal Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members do. However, is it too much for Taipei City residents to ask that he pay a bit more attention to their needs and a little less to those of the KMT? Asking the Control Yuan and Taipei Prosecutors’ Office to investigate 11 city officials and two companies for possible dereliction of duty over the gondola, as Hau did in January, is not enough.
The city government used political chicanery to rush through construction of the gondola, claiming it didn’t need a construction licence because the system was a major transportation facility and that no environmental impact assessment was needed because the area covered by the system was not large enough to warrant such a measure. Taipei residents and visitors alike shouldn’t have to sacrifice their safety on the altar of political expediency.
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