Construction leads to road safety risks: commission

As many as 87 percent of the nation's roads are bumpy because of the installation of underground tap water, sewage, electricity, telephone, natural gas and broadband pipelines, the Executive Yuan's Public Construction Commission (PCC) said yesterday, adding that the uneven surfaces have caused many complaints and even some accidents and road fatalities.

Last year 2,460km of public roads were dug up for the installation of one or more types of pipelines, costing the government NT$12.1 billion, the PCC said.

Of the 87 percent of roads that failed to comply with PCC standards, 7 percent of the problems pertained to the asphalt thickness not meeting its guidelines, 21 percent were related to substandard asphalt packing to make it firm, 25 percent because the filling materials were subpar and 48 percent of the roads were uneven after the pipework, the commission said.

The situation may only get worse, the commission warned. Over the next two years, NT$3.9 billion has been budgeted for water, telephone and natural gas lines and NT$36.1 billion has been budgeted for the underground sewage system and broadband connections. If these projects were handled in the same unsatisfactory manner as last year, Taiwan's roads will continue to worsen, posing a threat to road safety, the commission said.

Last year alone, 3,615 complaints were reported to the commission's national monitoring hotline, with 3,221 of them being gripes about the quality of public roads, the commission said.

Between 2005 and last year, 38 percent of all state compensation cases were related to road safety, the PCC said, adding that the 221 cases resulted in 16 deaths and 125 injuries and cost the nation NT$64 million in compensation.

To increase the quality of road safety, the PCC will employ more stringent regulations for the contractors in charge of the work.