The Taipei City Government promised yesterday to ease traffic on the intersection of Zhonghua Road and Aiguo W Road after the dismantling of an overpass sparked growing complaints about congestion around the area.
The intersection of the two roads was reopened last week. The overpass was removed during Lunar New Year.
With six roads -- Zhonghua Road sections 1 and 2, Aiguo W Road, Xining S Road, Guilin Road and Nanning Road -- intersecting and five traffic lights, it takes about three minutes for traffic lights to change for each crossing.
Faced with motorists' complaints about the traffic, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (
"I think the drivers are not used to the roads after the bridge was removed. We will send more police to help drivers with the directions," Hau said during an inspection of the intersections.
Meanwhile, the city government's Department of Transportation said that motorists' were not yet accustomed to driving in the new fast lanes of Aiguo W Road, resulting in congestion around the area.
Luo Shiaw-shyan (
Kuo Chong-sheng (郭宗生), a division chief, said the department would set up more traffic signs to remind drivers and add a traffic light on Zhonghua Road to improve the traffic situation.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift