Taipei City’s Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS) yesterday apologized for failing to complete compatibility tests for the Wenshan-Neihu MRT Line’s 25 older trains, promising to fix the problem as soon as possible.
The DORTS was scheduled to complete testing by Feb. 24 after refitting the 25 trains from the Muzha MRT Line to make them compatible with the Neihu Line’s Bombardier system.
The trains will help increase the number of trains in operation on the Wenshan-Neihu Line.
Commissioner of the DORTS Richard Chen (陳椿亮) yesterday acknowledged that the contractor and system builder, Bombardier, was still running the compatibility tests, and apologized for the delay.
Chen said the 25 trains had passed a system safety examination, but failed a stopping control test.
Taipei City Secretariat Deputy Director Tan Gwa-guang (譚國光) said responsibility for completing the tests on time fell on the contractor and system builder, and the Taipei City Government would fine the contractor NT$400,000 for each day the tests run behind schedule.
“I want to stress that the compatibility tests will not affect the operation of the Wenshan-Neihu Line,” he added.
Tan also denied that integration problems between the Matra and Bombardier systems continued to haunt the Wenshan-Neihu Line, and said the tests would be completed soon.
Integrating the two systems has been a major issue for the line.
The Wenshan-Neihu Line, an extension of the Muzha Line, did not continue with the French-built Matra system used on the original Muzha Line, and instead had a system built by Montreal-based Bombardier.
A total of 51 new trains are running on the Wenshan-Neihu Line, and Bombardier has refitted the 25 original Muzha Line trains to make them compatible with its system.
Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) yesterday urged the DORTS to complete the tests as soon as possible, so that more trains can run on the line and shorten the interval between trains.
Tan said Bombardier will send experts to check the system integration and hasten the testing.
When asked when the testing would be completed, however, he declined to give a timetable.
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