Traffic on freeways was heavy yesterday for the start of the three-day weekend as locals traveled on the Double Ten national holiday.
Heavy traffic began to emerge on the Chiang Wei-shui Freeway (Freeway No. 5) starting at around 7am yesterday.
By 9am, a line of vehicles extended from the southbound entrance of the Hsuehshan Tunnel to Formosa Freeway (Freeway No. 3).
To ease traffic congestion during holidays, the National Freeway Bureau announced earlier that toll booths on freeways would be closed between 12am and 6am from Double Ten day yesterday until tomorrow.
Peng Huan-ju (彭煥儒), chief of the bureau’s traffic engineering section, said traffic volume on freeways topped 1.64 million vehicles on Thursday, 20 percent higher than on regular weekdays.
He said, however, that a significant number of motorists have taken advantage of the toll-free hours.
Yesterday, the traffic volume from midnight until 6am reached 244,000 vehicles on freeways, which is 1.5 times higher than normal weekday volume.
Southbound traffic on the Freeways No. 1 and No. 3 eased up after 12pm yesterday.
As of 6pm yesterday, most of the traffic on Freeway No. 5 was back to normal.
However, the southbound lanes near the Hsuehshan Tunnel remained congested.
Meanwhile, passengers began swarming into Taipei Station on Thursday evening to take trains run by the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) and the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC).
Taipei Railway Station director Lee Yung-sheng (李永生) said express trains departing Taipei after 5:30pm on Thursday were all packed.
On average, each train was delayed by about four to five minutes, he said.
THSRC reported that the number of passengers reached approximately 142,000 on Thursday.
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