Today and tomorrow mark the completion of two major transportation construction projects -- the Hengchun Wuliting Airport in Pingtung County and the second north-south freeway.
The completion of the projects comes just days before the Lunar New Year, traditionally the nation's longest and most important holiday, and is expected to meet extra travel demand.
The Hengchun Wuliting Airport, the nation's 18th airport, will be officially opened today by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
However, airlines will not begin operating regular passenger services until tomorrow. Three airlines will offer services to Hengchun.
Beginning tomorrow, UNI Airways and Mandarin Airlines will fly one daily return service between Taipei and Hengchun and between Taichung and Hengchun.
Trans Asia Airways will also provide a return flight from Taipei once daily.
The airport commenced construction in July 2000, and was part of a program to boost tourism in the nation's south. It cost NT$530 billion.
Direct flights to Wuliting Airport will cut the travel time between Taipei and the adjacent resort area of Kenting by at least two-and-a-half hours, officials said.
Responding to allegations that the airport facility was being opened prematurely and that safety was being compromised, Civil Aeronautics Administration director general Billy Chang (
He added that the administration's testing and licensing process was in accordance with standards set down by the International Civil Aviation Organization. Fire safety inspections had also been performed, he said.
The three airlines servicing the airport reported that ticket bookings for the first few days of the airport's operation had been less than ideal, though flights for the Lunar New Year period were selling well.
FREEWAY
The opening ceremony for Freeway No. 3, the nation's second north-south freeway, will take place tomorrow. President Chen will open the entire length of Freeway No. 3 to regular traffic.
Construction on the freeway began in 1987 in the Taipei area. The northern section was completed in 1997, and by 2000 segments of the southern section of the freeway were also open to traffic.
The southernmost section of the freeway, extending from the Pingtung City exit at Linluo (
The middle section, to be opened tomorrow, continues from Lungching Township (
The launch of this 19km middle section, which is expected to ease congestion in the Taichung area, will mark the completion of the entire length of the freeway, as well as completion of the west coast freeway system.
The 432km freeway cost more than NT$458 billion to build and includes 11 toll stations and seven rest areas. Due to the hilly or populated areas through which the freeway travels, bridges and elevated road account for an estimated 40 percent of the length of the freeway.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the