Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) yesterday apologized after the latest malfunction on the MRT’s Wenshan-Neihu Line sparked new concerns about the line’s safety, and promised to solve the problem as soon as possible.
The emergency brake intensifier malfunctioned on one of the trains at 9:47am on Monday, causing a burning smell in the cars because of unnecessary friction between the brake pad and brake disk.
The TRTC later stopped the train at Xihu MRT Station and evacuated all 200 passengers.
Monday’s incident marked the sixth malfunction of the line’s emergency brake intensifier since its test run period in 2008.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors yesterday lashed out at the TRTC and the Taipei City Government for failing to solve the problem over the past two years and putting passengers’ safety at risk. They demanded the company find a solution as soon as possible.
“The problem should have been solved when it was first discovered during test runs in 2008, but it is still occurring. The fires on the old Muzha line could happen again if those in charge continue to play down the incident,” DPP Taipei City Councilor Liu Yao-ren (劉燿仁) said yesterday at the Taipei City Council.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Hung Chien-yi (洪健益) also shared his concerns, urging the TRTC to improve the temperature-detecting devices installed on the wheels.
Taipei Secretariat Director Yang Hsi-an (楊錫安) yesterday acknowledged that the city government had assumed the emergency brake system malfunction was a “one-off problem” when it first occurred in February 2008, and did not make a thorough inspection of the system until it occurred a third time.
“We thought it was a one-off occurrence the first time, but we later demanded that the system builder, Bombardier Inc, solve the problem immediately. We won’t let cars catch fire again,” he said.
The old Muzha Line experienced two fires during testing in 1993 when train wheels caught fire from too much friction between the brake pad and brake disk due to a malfunction of the emergency brake system.
Chairman of the TRTC Richard Chen (陳椿亮) said the company would work with Bombardier to improve the quality of the wheels’ temperature detection system to prevent overheating and fires.
Yang said the city government and the TRTC would continue improving the quality of the Wenshan-Neihu Line and increase the stability of the line.
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