Despite the 2,800 tour buses rushing into Taipei City and hundreds of thousands of protesters marching on the streets yesterday, Taipei police and transportation officials reported smooth traffic after they took steps to avert chaos.
To ease the traffic flow, the Taipei City Police Department mobilized over 4,800 police officers and imposed traffic regulations on the ten parade routes that spilled across half of Taipei City. As of press time, city officials reported no traffic accidents, saying the mass protest closed on a peaceful note.
The Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation also reported an unprecedented load of up to half a million passengers by 4pm yesterday, a figure that is about 120,000 passengers more than usual holiday traffic.
Apart from adding 300 MRT police and volunteers to enforce crowd control, the MRT also added more trains to help people leave the city center.
Meanwhile, railway authorities said five additional express trains took 5,000 people from the south to Taipei yesterday.
"These passengers are expected to head back south around 7pm. We believe ten additional train runs will ease possible congestion," said the director of Taipei Main Station, Chiu Rong-hwa (
"As soon as the cars and tour buses can get out of Taipei City, there will be no jams on the Sun Yat-sun Freeway or the Second Freeway. There are only minor jams around highway stop areas," said the director-general of the Taiwan Area National Freeway Liang Yueh (
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
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