The utilization rate of public transportation in Kaohsiung City reached 80 percent of capacity during the opening and closing ceremonies of the World Games, the city’s Transportation Bureau said yesterday.
In a press release, the bureau said the utilization rate of the city’s MRT system rose 27 percent, while that of buses surged 74 percent between July 16 and July 26.
The city government offered free bus rides during the 11 days of the Games.
An average of about 132,600 people take the MRT per day, while 71,500 take the bus, the bureau said. During the Games, the number of MRT passengers rose to about 167,800 per day, while bus passengers increased to 124,700.
Meanwhile, about 83 percent of respondents in a Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) survey said they were satisfied with the city’s year-old MRT system.
The results of the poll, conducted by National Cheng Kung University’s Research and Development Foundation, were released to mark the first anniversary of the city’s two MRT lines.
About 650 respondents participated in the survey.
In related developments, the city’s Public Works Bureau said the nation’s first oceanic culture and pop music center was scheduled for completion in 2015.
The Council for Economic Planning and Development on Monday approved the city’s proposal to build the center between piers 11 and 15 at Kaohsiung Harbor.
The project is expected to cost NT$5.5 billion (US$168.2 million).
“With the experience of building the World Games main stadium, we are confident that the [pop music] venue will become a landmark of southern Taiwan,” Deputy Kaohsiung Mayor Lee Yung-te (李永得) said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching