The Taipei City Government could spend even more money on the MRT’s problem-plagued Wenshan-Neihu Line amid growing complaints from passengers about the poor design of the carriages’ slippery seats, a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilor said yesterday.
Taipei City Councilor Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏) said replacing the seats could cost the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) more than NT$280 million (US$8 million).
“We warned the city government and TRTC about the poor design of the seats, but they did not listen. Now they are wasting taxpayers’ money replacing them. It’s ridiculous,” she said.
TRTC did away with the old seats used on the Muzha Line when the Neihu section opened, saying the protruding middle sections of the new seats prevented passengers from having to sit shoulder-to-shoulder and offered a more comfortable environment.
However, many passengers have complained that the new seat designs drastically cut seating space.
TRTC chairman Chen Chun-liang (陳椿亮) acknowledged that the company was in discussions to replace the seats, but said it would use its “reconstruction fund” — which draws from company profits — to replace the seats if the plan is finalized.
Chen said the company could flatten the protruding section of the seats, but whether it would adopt the design used on the Danshui Line was still under discussion.
The company will finalize the plan after discussing the seats and budget with the suppliers, he 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
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