Waves of people trying to beat the northbound traffic on their way home before the week-long Lunar New Year holidays ends tomorrow packed the nation's highways yesterday, the National Freeway Bureau said.
The bureau said 1.83 million vehicles hit the roads before 5pm yesterday, more than twice the normal traffic volume, while the whole day's numbers were estimated to break 2.8 million, an all-time high.
The most congested highway was the Chiang Wei-shui Freeway connecting Taipei and Ilan via the Hsuehshan Tunnel (
In the west, traffic passing through Chiayi (
The bureau expected northbound traffic to worsen after 5pm.
While all northbound traffic was heavily congested with vehicles moving as slow as 20kph to 30kph, travel south was relatively smooth, sailing along at 80kph to 90kph, the bureau said.
Flights between Taiwan and Kinmen were equally crammed, the Central News Agency said.
Though Kinmen's Shang Yi Airport began service at 7am yesterday, lines started to form at 4am, the report said.
"As of 11:30am, there were more than 400 travelers on the waiting list, nearly 300 of whom were trying to get to Taipei, with only 60 people having obtained seats," the report said.
The National Police Agency said that to accommodate the amount of people traveling, all police stations around the nation would be open to the public who wish to use the bathroom.
Some local police stations have even placed rented portable bathrooms along the highways for those stuck in traffic, the agency said.
Today being the last day of the Lunar New Year holiday, the final wave of traffic is expected to line the highways, the bureau said.
Toll collection will be suspended in both directions from midnight to 6am, while some northbound entrances will be closed, including Tainan, Puyan (埔鹽), and Jhongli (中壢) on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (No.1) and Dashi (大溪) on Freeway No.3, the bureau said.
In addition, tourists are prohibited from entering the Hohuanshan (合歡山) area until tomorrow at 6am because of icy roads, it said.
Early birds can dodge some of the congestion and save time if they start their journeys at the crack of dawn, suggested Taipei resident Nicolas Wu (吳欣源), who started his drive from Tainan City early yesterday morning and arrived in Taipei in just three hours.
"My car was going quite smoothly without any hold ups," he said. "However, I suggest that those who wish to start their trips early drive more carefully, as the roads are slippery and wet."
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching