The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) said yesterday that abnormalities detected in switch trips during inspections of the high speed rail tracks a week ago occurred as a result of human error and faulty equipment.
"And since the incident did not happen on the main railway track, it is not recognized as an accident," said MOTC vice minister Ho Nuan-hsuen (
Ho said the required two-week test runs have been conducted as planned and are scheduled to be completed by Wednesday.
Regarding the 33 major defects brought up by the high speed rail's inspection committee, Ho said 24 of them have been corrected.
Ho said the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp has yet to submit a report detailing a one-month accident-free record, a report on the stability of the railway tracks and the corporation's ticketing plan.
These reports must be turned in by next week. A meeting will be held on Sunday next week to decide whether or not the high speed rail can be allowed to operate.
While Ho said earlier this month that the ministry will adopt the definitions listed in the Railway Law (
Even though inspectors conditionally approved the launch of the high speed rail last week, the ministry has been holding periodic meetings with the company to make sure it will meet requirements and launch on schedule.
Samuel Lin (林鵬良), deputy chief operations officer of THSRC's Railway Operation Division, also explained to the press yesterday the cause of incident.
He said the incident in Tsoying (
And because the train driver started operating the train without waiting for confirmation from the control center, the first bogie of the train hit and damaged the switching trips.
"The accident shows that crews need to be more familiar with standardized operating procedures," Lin said.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS