Construction work on an overpass between Wugu (五股) and Yangmei (楊梅) along Freeway No. 1 is scheduled to begin in November in a bid to ease rush hour traffic, the Taiwan Area National Expressway Engineering Bureau said yesterday.
The overpass will be about 40km long, the project’s chief engineer, Chang Chung-ching (張純青), said.
“Traffic is quite heavy on this section of Freeway No. 1 and congestion is often reported near the interchange for Taoyuan International Airport,” Chang said. “Normally, it takes about an hour to drive from Wugu to Yangmei.”
The overpass will reduce travel time by about 30 minutes, he said.
The project came in for questioning by the Environmental Protection Administration’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) committee because the northbound section near Linkou (林口) would pass through some sensitive geological zones.
The committee ruled that the construction must bypass these zones, so the bureau decided to change the design of the section between the Taishan Toll Station and the Linkou Interchange, a length of about 2.8km.
In this section, the northbound lanes will be built above the southbound lanes, which means the bureau will also have to build a 2.16m-steel bridge spanning Freeway No. 1.
Chang said the EIA committee also required the bureau to designate the inner lanes on the stretch from the Taishan Toll Station to Jhongli (中壢) for high occupancy vehicles (HOV). Cars in the HOV lanes must have at least three people in them.
Chang said that some had suggested the inner lanes be used for large passenger vehicles, but since these vehicles account for just 4 percent to 5 percent of traffic, the bureau decided to designate the lanes as HOV instead.
The overpass will cost approximately NT$88.2 billion (US$2.67 billion) and is scheduled to be operational by 2012.
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