The legislature's Transportation Committee yesterday asked the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to evaluate the possibility of reducing freeway tolls from NT$40 to NT$30 in parts of central and southern Taiwan.
The committee also passed a resolution that the results of the evaluation should be delivered within a month.
The discount toll fees would apply to National Freeway No. 1 (Sun Yat-sen Freeway), south of the Yuanlin (員林) toll station in Changhua County as well as National Freeway No. 3 (Chiang Wei-shui Freeway), south of the Minchien (民間) toll station in Nantou County.
"On both freeways, the distance between two toll stations in the south is on average 10km shorter than in the north. This means that motorists in the south are being unfairly charged," Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Yeh Yi-ching (
From Yuanlin to Gangshan (
On Chiang Wei-shui Freeway, the average distance between toll stations is 35.3km from Minchien to Tianliao (
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) concurred. Huang said the tolls had already brought in revenues equivalent to the sum spent on constructing the freeways and questioned why motorists were still being charged toll fees.
In response, Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau Director-General Lee Tai-ming (
Minister of Transportation and Communications Tsai Duei (蔡堆) said the distance between toll stations in the north was further because some sections of the freeways also function as local expressways.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
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