The opening of the Hsuehshan Tunnel yesterday drew crowds of motorists eager to be among the first ones through -- creating a traffic jam that saw bumper-to-bumper traffic backed up for 1km outside the tunnel entrance.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) officially opened the 12.9km tunnel -- Asia's longest and the world's fourth-longest -- at 1pm. Some motorists were so enthusiastic about being the first through the tunnel that they had started lining up well before then. It took less than an hour for a huge traffic jam to form.
Reports from the Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau yesterday showed that more than 1,000 cars drove through the tunnel each hour.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
One driver told the Taipei Times that she and other drivers were forced to stop at the entrance for a while before they could get inside. Once inside the tunnel, however, she was able to drive at more than 40kph and sometimes up to the 50kph minimum speed required by the MOTC.
Motorists were not penalized on the first day for driving below the speed limit, the National Highway Police Bureau said. According to the bureau, one driver was caught violating lane-switching rules.
The construction of the tunnel took 15 years and cost a total of NT$90.6 billion (US$2.83 billion). The project has continued through the administrations of seven premiers and 10 MOTC ministers.
An unveiling ceremony was held yesterday for a monument commemorating 25 workers who lost their lives during the tunnel's construction.
The ceremony was jointly attended Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), three other former premiers -- Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄), Yu Shyi-kun and Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), MOTC minister Kuo Yao-chi (郭瑤琪), and family members of the deceased workers. Government officials and family members presented white roses to honor the deceased workers' sacrifice. The sandstone monument, which is shaped like a mountain, includes the names of those who died, along with a brief introduction regarding the construction of the highway.
Kuo recounted the challenges of constructing the tunnel in a speech. She said it took the ministry an average of one year to build one kilometer of the tunnel.
Engineers encountered massive inflows of water on 13 occasions. One of the tunnel-boring machines was buried in a collapse.
"It was considered one of the world's most difficult construction projects by Encyclopedia Britannica," Kuo said.
The event then arranged for Su, Hsieh, Yu and Chang to ride together in a jeep through the tunnel. Su, the designated driver, happily presented his driver's license to the press. However, it took Su almost 15 minutes to figure out how to drive a stick-shift car before he was able to hit the road.
Hsuehshan Tunnel statistics
* It is Asia's longest tunnel and the world's fourth longest, at 12.9km. It is the world's largest two-shaft tunnel.
* It's surrounded by the world's largest network of tunnels, 58 in total.
The total depth of the six ventilation shaft is 2,437m, nearly five times the height of Taipei 101 (508m).
* 5,090,000 cubic meters of earth and stone were dug out to construct the tunnel - a volume equivalent to five Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Halls.
* Nearly 370,000 cubic meters of concrete were used in the construction, seven times more than that used to construct Taipei 101.
* The tunnel uses 20,000 illuminating units, equivalent to the lighting of six Tianmu baseball stadiums.
* 2,000km of cables were installed for the traffic control system and core mechanical system of the tunnel - enough to wrap around the nation's coastline twice.
Source: Taiwan Area National Expressway Engineering Bureau
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
WARNING: China should stop engaging in actions that undermine regional peace and stability, as it would only build resentment among people across the Strait, the CGA said China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard and other vessels in waters from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific since US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met in Beijing, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. “In this part of the world, #China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the #StatusQuo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Beijing was coercing Taiwan’s maritime domain, calling it illegal and provocative, after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) expelled a
RSS