Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) could see serious traffic congestion when a bus station next to MRT Taipei City Hall Station opens in July, a city official said.
The bus station, which is located at the intersection of Keelung Road and Zhongxiao E Road, could have more than 250 buses entering or exiting the terminal during rush hour, increasing traffic on the district’s already busy streets.
Taipei City Government’s Department of Transportation Commissioner Luo Shiaw-shyan (羅孝賢) acknowledged that the opening of the bus station would cause traffic congestion in the area and Luo has proposed several measures to tackle the problem.
The department opened Lane 20, Sect 5 of Zhongxiao E Road to two-way traffic last week to ease congestion and it will adjust the route of several buses that pass the intersection of Keelung Road and Zhongxiao E Road.
Kuo Tsung-sheng (郭宗生), a division chief at the department, said the bus station will serve as a transportation hub for commuter buses running to Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Yilan.
“This bus station is smaller than the one at Taipei Main Station, with fewer buses traveling shorter distances, and so it should have less impact on the traffic,” Kuo said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Chen Yu-mei (陳玉梅), however, said the city government failed to learn its lesson from when the Taipei Bus Station near Taipei Main Station was opened, as the bus station in Xinyi suffers from the same problems of a lack of space and inconvenient location.
Taipei Bus Station, located at the intersection of Chengde Road and Huayin Street, opened in August last year amid concerns about the heavy traffic congestion it created. Councilors also accused the city government of allowing the operator to make excess profits, as the bus terminal and waiting area only occupied 9.4 percent of the 24-story building, which features a shopping mall, movie theater and hotel.
The new bus station in Xinyi District is similar, with the bus terminal and waiting area occupying just 2,400 ping (7,934m²) of the 43,000 ping building. The 31-story building also features a shopping mall and hotel.
“The city government is compromising to big business again. Most of the space is not used for transportation and transit services. The same problems, including heavy traffic jams and insufficient room for passengers, will happen again,” she said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods