Dozens of tour bus operators rallied in front of the Ministry of Transportation and Communica-tions yesterday morning to protest the government's policy on "overweight" tour buses.
They said the policy is too harsh and the government has been inflexible about it, which they said was unacceptable.
Cheng Chin-yun (
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
"If we are forced to modify the buses to fit the government's requirement, they will become unsafe to drive," Cheng said.
In addition, since the buses have to be recertified every two years, this means the owners would have to strip down the vehicles every two years to meet the certification requirements, which is unreasonable, Cheng added.
The operators also demanded the government offer special discounts for fuel as it does for other forms of public transport such as public buses and taxis.
When asked how many tour bus operators are affected by the regulation, Cheng said there were too many to count.
Protesters began their demonstration yesterday morning with a parade that took them from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial to the Legislative Yuan to present their petitions to the lawmakers. They then drove to the ministry.
The ministry has set different weight limits for motor vehicles according to size and the model. For tour buses, the weight limit is 17 tonnes.
Following the suggestion of some lawmakers, the ministry amended its regulations by allowing vehicles that exceed weight limits by no more 800kg to be certified. In return, drivers of these overweight vehicles must drive below 90kph on freeways.
Officials from both the Department of Highways and Railways and the Directorate General of Highways said overweight tour buses are not a big problem.
They said that 90 percent of the nation's tour buses have been the certification requirements.
There are about 1,000 buses that could be categorized as "overweight," of which about 700 exceed the weight limit by 800kg or less, they said.
The ministry is unlikely to compromise on passenger safety by relaxing the regulation, they said.
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