The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) is planning to spend about NT$800 million (US$25 million) creating bicycle routes that will allow bikers to ride all the way from Gongliao (貢寮) in Taipei County to Hualien.
Construction of the bike routes began last year, with a focus on scenic areas along the east coast.
The Directorate-General of Highways (DGH) is using provincial and county highways to build the bike routes.
Workers have covered roadside ditches, improved the pavements, marked out bike lanes and raised the level of the guard rails.
Since last year, the agency has finished 250km of bike route.
Lee Chung-chang (李忠璋), deputy director of the DGH’s maintenance division, said the directorate plans to complete the project within four years. For this year, the directorate will work on the bike lanes on Provincial Highways No. 8 and No. 2.
The agency is planning to build a 1.7km scenic bike route on Provincial Highway No. 8.
“We think the section between Taroko Gorge and the Asia Cement Corp (亞洲水泥) site is quite beautiful,” Lee said. “Our plan is to keep the flame trees and cover the roadside ditches to make it into a bike lane.”
The agency is also planning to build rest areas along the route so that cyclists can stop and take in the scenery.
Lee said the project on Highway No. 8 will have an estimated cost of NT$30 million and is scheduled to be completed by September.
Meanwhile, the a 16km bike lane along the outer side of Provincial Highway No. 2 is also being planned. It would connect the bikeway inside the Old Caoling Tunnel (舊草嶺隧道) and the one between Longman (龍門) and Yenliao (鹽寮) to become the nation’s first bicycle loop route.
The loop route will be about 26km long and will enable bikers to ride along the entire Northeast Coast, Lee said.
Construction on Highway No. 2 will cost about NT$280 million, and is scheduled to be completed by August next year, the official 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
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
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