The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) will soon convene a meeting to determine whether to implement high occupancy controls or other measures on Freeway No. 5 to ease heavy traffic on holidays.
Chi Wen-jong (祈文中), director of the Department of Railways and Highways, said the Hsuehshan Tunnel was designed to accommodate 40,000 vehicles per day. However, as many as 70,000 vehicles have often passed through the tunnel in one day.
“Congestion has been reported frequently near the Hsuehshan Tunnel, which shows that regulatory measures should be implemented on more than just long holidays,” Chi said. “It is necessary to explore possible ways to regulate weekend traffic as well, including high occupancy controls, closing some of the feeder roads or activating the meter system on the ramps.”
High occupancy controls require motorists to take at least two other passengers with them before they are allowed on the freeway.
Chi said the ministry would ensure that the measures take into account the situation on both Freeway No. 5 and alternative routes nearby. It would not reroute some of the traffic to alternative routes simply to ease congestion in the Hsueshan Tunnel, he said.
Statistics from the Taiwan Area Freeway Bureau showed that about 80 percent of drivers take Freeway No. 5 for occasional travel or to visit relatives or friends. Only 20 percent must commute daily on the freeway.
The worst traffic on Freeway No. 5 is generally reported on the last day of holidays. On average, drivers can be stuck in traffic for more than six hours.
During the New Year holidays this year, about 70 percent of southbound vehicles carried three passengers. Ninety-two percent of northbound cars carried three passengers.
About 75 percent of northbound drivers voluntarily follow the high-occupancy rules on weekends, while about 70 percent of southbound motorists do so.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
RSS