In response to a number of recent mishaps, the Taipei City Government announced yesterday that it would take the Maokong cable car system out of service every Monday to conduct regular inspections.
The new schedule will come into effect next week, when inspections and maintenance of the system's cabins, tires and other equipment will begin. However, the cable car may be opened to the public on a Monday if it is a national holiday, the city government said.
"Although the city government continues to have confidence in the cable car, we and the evaluation committee agreed that regular checkups are a necessary procedure -- especially for such a new system," Taipei City Secretariat Deputy Director Yang Hsi-an (
Yang said that the frequent equipment failures had put pressure on the city government and prompted it to cut the number of operating days to ensure the stability of the system.
The cable car suffered a major equipment failure last Saturday, which left some 300 visitors trapped in the cabins for more than two hours. Another four-hour shutdown took place on Tuesday after unusual noises were heard.
Statistics from the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) show that approximately 15,000 passengers take the gondola every day, and halting the service on Mondays will result in losses of around NT$750,000 per day.
While declining to discuss the financial loss, Yang said the city government would demand that French company POMA, the system's builder, supply more spare parts.
Lee Shu-chuan (李四川), director of the city's New Construction Department, said that POMA had not supplied sufficient spare parts such as screws and axles, which forced the department to find the materials in local shops when fixing the equipment failure last Saturday.
Yang said that although POMA had only assigned one engineer to stay on in Taiwan, the company was still responsible for overseeing maintenance of the system for a three-year period.
Yang said that as the system was at the point of "substantial completion," rather than final acceptance, the three-year guarantee period hadn't formally begun.
In response to concerns about running the system before final acceptance, Yang said the Taipei MRT system had also started operations at the substantial completion stage with no major problems.
"Running the system now gives us the chance to discover any issues that we would otherwise be unable to notice," he said.
Noting that POMA's other gondola system at Hualien's Ocean Park had experienced no serious equipment failures in five years, Yang said that the Maokong system was more complex because of its longer length and two sharp turns.
"The city government has been testing the system since January, and we are confident that the Maokong cable car's operations will eventually be as good as Taipei's MRT system," he added.
The cable car will operate from 9am to 10pm from Tuesday to Friday, and from 8:30am to 10pm on weekends and holidays.
Yang said the cable car may resume service on Mondays if regular checkups failed to identify any significant problems.
REASONS FOR TRAVEL: An assistant professor said that proposed amendments to penalize drivers if they used drugs overseas would not deter people from traveling People who operate a motor vehicle under the influence of marijuana would have their driver’s license revoked, even if they used the substance while overseas, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday, citing proposed amendments to the Road Traffic Management and Penalty Act (道路交通管理處罰條例). The amendments would also authorize the government to revoke the licenses of people determined to have used Category 1 or Category 2 narcotics, even if they were not operating a vehicle while under the influence of drugs, as well as ban them from taking the license test for three years, the ministry said. People aged 18 or
GLOBALGIVING: ‘ Caving to external pressure is not acceptable for an organization that has cultivated justice reform and human rights for 30 years,’ one NGO said A slew of non-government organizations (NGOs) have withdrawn from the GlobalGiving fundraising platform after it announced it would use “Chinese Taipei” instead of “Taiwan” from next month. The Taiwan Good Rice Association wrote on Facebook on Friday that it was informed on April 28 via a teleconference call of the change, which was made because the platform wanted to operate in China. Taiwan Good Rice is to terminate all cooperative relationships with GlobalGiving in response to the platform’s “unilateral and non-negotiable” decision to remove references to Taiwan, the NGO said. “Taiwan is in the official name of Taiwan Good Rice Association and the
HEAVY WEATHER: Typhoon Jangmi is due to crash straight into the Ryukyus as airlines look to shift flights to larger aircraft or cancel flights to Okinawa entirely Taiwan’s international air carriers announced flight adjustments over the weekend as Typhoon Jangmi is forecast to hit the Ryukyu Islands today and tomorrow. The Central Weather Administration (CWA) upgraded Jangmi from a tropical storm to a typhoon at 8am yesterday, with the eye located 580km south of Naha city. It was moving north at 19kph. Today, China Airlines’ CI-120, CI-121, CI-122 and CI-123 flights between Taoyuan and Naha, Okinawa, have been canceled as well as CI-132 and CI-133 between Kaohsiung and Naha. EVA Air’s BR-112, BR-113, BR-186 and BR-185 flights between Taoyuan and Naha are also canceled. Low-cost carrier Tigerair Taiwan canceled IT-230,
MULTIPRONGED APPROACH: China has sought to pressure Palau across a number of fronts, but the island nation has staunchly resisted overtures to ditch Taiwan Palau has been firm in backing Taiwan despite Chinese pressure that uses tourism economics, cyberattacks and criminal infiltration as tools to threaten the Pacific ally into renouncing its recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state. The Presidential Office yesterday announced that Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) would visit Palau from Saturday to Wednesday next week at the invitation of Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr. Whipps in April said in an interview that China had outspokenly asked Palau to “denounce Taiwan.” “And we have said: ‘We have no enemies, but nobody tells us who our friends are,’” he said. Whipps has told reporters multiple times
RSS