The Maokong Gondola, Taipei City's first cable car system, has attracted more than 380,000 passengers since its opening on July 4, but frequent breakdowns have clouded the otherwise popular system and prompted the Taipei City Government to limit the days of operation in order to do weekly inspections.
Although the city government continued to vouch for the safety of the system, critics of the gondola project slammed the city government for its poor emergency response measures, and urged it to resolve the issues of operational instability caused by human error and poor coordination among different departments to improve the service.
RUSHED
PHOTO: CNA
"The biggest problem of all is former mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (
The Maokong Gondola project was proposed by the Taipei City Department of Transportation in 2005. The construction was completed in one year and the gondola opened to the public earlier this month after a 12-week test run period.
Chien blamed recent system shutdowns on the city government's failure to get a construction license and to conduct environmental impact assessments before building the system.
In response to Chien's accusation, the Taipei City Department of New Construction, which was responsible for building the system, argued that the system is a "major transportation facility," and so no construction license was needed.
Furthermore, according to environmental impact assessment regulations, the area covered by the system was not big enough to require an assessment, the department argued.
"Is the gondola a mode of transportation? The city government simply used it as an excuse to avoid applying for a license and to rush the construction," Chien said.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Chuang Jui-hsiung (莊瑞雄) joined Chien in slamming the city government, condemning it for ignoring the public safety by running the gondola system before final acceptance.
Taipei City Secretariat Deputy Director Yang Hsi-an (楊錫安) acknowledged on Wednesday that the system was at the point of "substantial completion," rather than final acceptance, and so the three-year guarantee period hadn't formally begun.
Yang argued that the Taipei MRT system had also started operations at the substantial completion stage with no major problems, and that formally operating the system allowed them to discover more problems that could otherwise go unnoticed.
"It also technically prolonged our guarantee period because POMA still needs to be responsible for the maintenance before the guarantee started," Yang said.
SPARE PARTS
Chuang said that not only had the city government rushed the operation before final acceptance, but also had failed to demand that the the system's builder, POMA of France, would provide sufficient spare parts in the guarantee contract. Without the spare parts, future operation and maintenance may become more difficult.
According to Chuang, POMA only provided 96 of the total of 607 spare parts that cannot be replaced by local products, and the new construction department did not give the spare part check list to the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp, the system's operator, until eight days after operation began.
Chuang also slammed the city government for its poor communication with the French company regarding technical support and emergency response measures.
Lee Shu-chuan (李四川), director of the new construction department, said the department signed the contract not with POMA, but with Chun Yuan Construction Corp, which won the construction bid and chose the French company to build and install the system.
Lee acknowledged that there were some spare parts that hadn't been given to the city government, but said that the department would demand Chun Yuan provide them as soon as possible.
"We will protect our rights and demand our contractors to follow the contract and guarantee plan," he added.
Yang also argued 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.
POMA Taiwan liaison office representative Henry Lee declined to comment on the accusations, and said the assigned engineer has been stationed at Maokong to provide on-site assistance.
MULTIPLE SECTORS
Joining DPP city councilors in challenging the system, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Lai Su-ju (
The cable car project was proposed by Taipei City's transportation department in 2005. The new construction department was in charge of the construction, and Taipei City Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) was responsible for its operation.
In construction, Chun Yuan Construction Corp won the construction contract from the new construction department in 2005 with NT$1.8 billion, and subcontracted the project to POMA.
Poor integration and coordination among the contractors and different departments of responsibility delayed the decision-making process during the recent accidents, and made it difficult to clarify the cause of the breakdowns and find out who should shoulder responsibility, she said.
According to statistics provided by Lai, there have been 113 system shutdowns since operation began, and 72 of the shutdowns were operational failures.
Lawrence Lan (藍武王), convener of Maokong Gondola's evaluation committee and a transportation professor at National Chiao Tung University, agreed that human negligence, rather than mechanical failure, should be blamed for recent major accidents.
"Those breakdowns could be easily prevented if on-site workers noticed system anomalies earlier, such as unusual noises, loose screws and low tire pressure, and fixed them immediately," he told the Taipei Times.
On the opening day of the system, a glitch caused by a faulty cabin door left Ma and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) hanging in mid-air for 10 minutes.
Last Saturday, the system also suffered an equipment failure due to low tire pressure and trapped 323 passengers in the cabins for more than two hours, followed by another four-hour breakdown on Tuesday due to some unusual noises on a headstock of a wheel.
Lee Ke-tsung (李克聰), an associate professor of traffic and transportation engineering and management at Feng Chia University, urged the city government to improve its poor emergency response.
MISTAKES
"It's ridiculous that the city government sat and did nothing until hours after noticing the unusual noise. Even with poor coordination, such mistakes should not happen," he said.
Yang acknowledged that after the system broke down last Saturday, the city government spent more than 20 minutes discussing whether to evacuate passengers or fix the breakdown first before starting to send passengers back to the station.
According to Yang, POMA's engineer insisted on following the SOP, which regarded solving the equipment failure as the priority, while TRTC and some city government officials wanted to evacuate passengers first.
Upset by the long delay, Hau slammed seven officials on Sunday for administrative negligence, and asked the team to put evacuation as the first priority in the future.
City councilors called on the city government to halt the service to run a thorough inspection of the system, but Lan said that the test run period and evaluation committee's primary inspection found no significant problems with the system.
stable
"The system has no safety concerns, and should be more stable after a while. After our primary inspection, it's now time for a citizen inspection," he said.
Lan was in support of the city government's plan to stop the service every Monday in order to conduct weekly inspections, and added that reducing the speed and lowering the cabin capacity from eight people per unit to six would help to stabilize the system.
In response to the criticism, Hau pledged to improve all the cable car problems in three months and to turn Maokong into the most popular tourist spot in Taipei City.
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