The Taipei City Government yesterday said that it would not add an MRT station at Tianshui Road (天水路) on the Songshan Line, ditching a key part of former mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) plan to revive business in the Datong District (大同).
Although some city councilors and local residents expected the station to bring more business to the Jiancheng Circle area, the Taipei City Department of Rapid Transit yesterday decided to abandon the plan following resistance from landowners and budget restraints.
The rapid transit department had planned to set up a station between the proposed Beimen Station (北門站) and Zhongshan Station (中山站). However, the central government did not agree to subsidize the project, which required a budget of NT$5.8 million (US$170 million), while the refusal by some landowners to sell property to the department further reduced the feasibility of the station, department director Tom Chan (常歧德) said.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (
In response to some city councilors' demands that the department build the station, Hau said that an MRT station would not necessarily revitalize Datong District. He said that transportation and urban development departments should seek other solutions to bring more business to the area.
The 8.5km Songshan Line, which will begin at Ximen Station and terminate at Songshan Station, is scheduled to be completed by 2013. Once completed, MRT travel time from Ximen to Songshan stations will be reduced to 15 minutes.
The underground line will contain seven stations and connect with the Nangang-Banciao Line, the Tamsui Line and the Muzha Line, as well as the Sinjhuang-Jhonghe Line, which is also under construction.
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