The Taipei MRT Wenshan-Neihu Line experienced a 57-minute service suspension yesterday afternoon because of a switch breakdown at Zhongxiao Fuxing Station, the Taipei City Government said yesterday.
The Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said the full Wen-Hu Line (文湖線) was suspended at 3:40pm and operation resumed at 4:37pm, with approximately 1,520 commuters evacuated from 23 trains.
The shutdown brought a huge number of complaints from commuters as it was near quitting time on a Friday afternoon before election day. Shuttle buses arranged by the TRTC to take the long lines of people outside MRT stations along the line to their destination did little to assuage complaints.
Tan Gwa-guang (譚國光), Taipei City Government Secretary-General, said the MRT system’s control center in Neihu suddenly lost contact with all 23 of its trains at 3:40pm and controllers decided to suspend the full-line service.
The incident was later attributed to a switch breakdown, Tan said, adding the TRTC needed to investigate further to determine the exactreason for the breakdown.
At the time of the shutdown, a train was moving toward Da-an Station from the Technology Building Station and another train was approaching Nanjing East Road Station from Zhongshan Junior High School Station. The other 21 trains happened to stop at various MRT stations.
The two trains that stopped between stations were operated manually to bring them to the stations to drop off commuters, Tan said.
Tan said that about 1,520 passengers had been evacuated by 3:51pm.
The incident came as an embarrassment to the Taipei City Government, which issued an evaluation report on Tuesday that said the line was functional for 99.18 percent of its scheduled running time last month, up from 97.1 percent in July and 96.2 percent in August after the TRTC and the system’s builder Bombardier had worked to improve the system.
Taipei City Councilor Lin Chin-chang (林晉章) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), who leads an investigation team on the problem-plagued line, said yesterday’s incident proved that the city government still could not ensure safe and smooth operation of the line.
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