Thursday’s deadly disruptions to traffic on the Suhua Highway caused by torrential rains have rekindled interest in improving the accident-prone roadway, with the central government being blasted by furious Hualien residents who said they have been yearning for a “safe road home” for many years, but kept being disappointed.
The scenic east coast was cut off by deadly rockslides on Thursday night after being pounded by record-breaking downpours from Typhoon Megi.
Since the section of the road between Suao (蘇澳) and Dongao (東澳) was hit by several serious rockslides, the Directorate General of Highways (DGH) said the highway could not be fixed until Nov. 20 at the earliest.
Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁) asked President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to at once begin the long-anticipated construction project aimed at improving the accident-prone roadway.
Fu said that such a fragile, but vital, road “is not only a problem that concerns 23 million Taiwanese people’s lives, it has harmed the country’s national dignity,” referring to the death of about 100 people every year on the cliff-edge highway to Hualien County, which he described as a showcase of the nation’s tourism.
“If construction improvements won’t begin before the end of the year, the Hualien County government will do it by itself,” Fu said.
Responding to Fu, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said in the Legislative Yuan on Friday that it was the government’s firm policy to fix roadways, promising that as soon as the highway improvement project passed environmental impact assessments, the government would begin construction.
However, Green Party convener Pan Han-sheng (潘翰聲) said Fu was being too emotional. The
damage caused by the “indirect effects” of the typhoon proves that the surrounding terrain on the highway is very vulnerable, he said.
As the global climate changes, any construction work on the Suhua Highway in the future is expected to face tough challenges because of the extreme climate, Pan said. He suggested the government prioritize plans to expand the existing railway system to the east.
“There are many ways to get home,” added Tsai Chung-yueh (蔡中岳), the spokesman for an alliance opposing the construction of a freeway along the scenic coast between Yilan and Hualien counties out of concern for the environment.
Tsai said that while the heavy rain completely blocked traffic on the Suhua Highway and left 23 people unaccounted for on Thursday and Friday, it only caused the railway connecting Taipei and Hualien to shut down for half a day on Thursday before resuming service.
He said that was because the construction of a railway has a smaller impact on the surrounding terrain than a roadway, and he advocated prioritizing plans to expand the railway system rather than improving the Suhua Highway. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications originally planned to build a new freeway between Suao and Hualien that would have bypassed the old highway, but the plan was shelved after drawing strong opposition from environmental activists.
The agency then proposed a plan to upgrade the existing road, reinforcing it where possible and bypassing some of the most dangerous sections with tunnels or other new roads.
The proposal is currently undergoing an environmental impact assessment.
Meanwhile, DGH Secretary-General Mile Chen (陳茂南) said that the Suhua Highway is not as fragile as many people have said. It was damaged so badly only because the rainfall was so heavy, he said.
In the future, traffic on the road would be suspended whenever the agency detected unusual amounts of rainfall, Chen said.
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