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Toll-free measures mitigate traffic pain during long holiday

The Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau said the toll-free measure implemented on freeways on the last day of the four-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday yesterday had helped ease daytime traffic.

The toll-free hours between 12am and 7am yesterday helped draw an estimated 240,000 motorists to hit the road early, the bureau said, which was 1.6 times the normal traffic volume on the freeways during those hours on a regular weekend, the bureau said.

Statistics from the bureau showed that the highest traffic volume on the Chiang Wei-Shui Freeway (Freeway No. 5) yesterday reached 2,700 cars per hour, comparing with about 1,000 cars per hour on a regular weekend.

Traffic on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1) and the Formosa Freeway (Freeway No. 3) was generally smooth, with driving speed averaging 80kph on the former and 60kph on the latter, the bureau said.

Meanwhile, despite the raise in the minimum driving speed inside the Hsuehshan Tunnel from 70kph to 80kph to facilitate traffic flow, traffic remained dense inside the tunnel yesterday.

At about 3:10pm yesterday, two fires were declared on the side of the tunnel’s southbound lanes, some 24.1km from the exit. The Pinglin Command Center immediately blocked the lanes, causing the traffic to back up 300m at the southbound entrance.

The fire was quickly put out. A preliminary investigation showed that one fire involved a blanket while the source of the other remained unknown, as the material had completely disintegrated. Police said they would look at surveillance cameras to determine the sources of the fires. Witnesses with information can contact police at (03) 988-9688.
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