Heavy traffic was reported on three of the major freeways yesterday as most people resume work today after the three-day Double Ten national holidays.
Traffic began to emerge on the Sun Yat-Sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1) and the Formosa Freeway (Freeway No. 3) after 2pm. Cars were slow on the northbound lanes between Yuanlin (員林) and Puyen (埔鹽) in Changhwa County and between Pingjen (平鎮) and Jhungli (中壢) in Taoyuan County on the Freeway No.1, as well as between Baoshan (寶山) and Chulin (竹林) in Hsinchu County on National Freeway No.3.
On the Chiang Wei-shui Freeway (Freeway No. 5), on the other hand, cars began to line up inside the Hsuehshan Tunnel around 11am. By 4pm, cars on northbound lanes were bumper to bumper for about 8km to the Ilan Interchange.
PHOTO: KUO YEN-HUI, TAIPEI TIMES
The Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau said yesterday that approximately 170,000 vehicles were on the national freeways during toll-free hours from 12am to 6am yesterday.
To ease the traffic, the bureau announced earlier that the shoulders on both the southbound and northbound lanes between Neili (內壢) and Jhongli (中壢) and the southbound lanes between Dasi (大溪) and Longtan (龍潭) would be open for traffic from 7am to 7pm yesterday.
The bureau also said that more than 19 million vehicles hit the freeways on Saturday, which is 25 percent more than the average traffic volume.
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