The MRT Luzhou (Lujhou) Line connecting Taipei County’s Lujhou (蘆洲) and Sanchong (三重) cities with Taipei City began service operations yesterday, attracting a large crowd to take advantage of the free trial service that lasts for one month.
Thousands of passengers rushed to experience the line on the first day of service when it opened at 2pm, crowding especially around Luzhou Station and the two transfer stations on that line — Zhongxiao Xinsheng and Minquan W Road stations.
“This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. Finally, residents in Lujhou and Sanchong can enjoy the convenience of the MRT. I am so excited about being able to take the MRT to work now,” 30-year-old Sanchong resident Chang Li-fang (張莉芳) said after taking a ride from Luzhou to Zhongxiao Xinsheng Station.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
The one-month free trial run, however, sparked confusion as some passengers complained about having to pay for their rides.
“Isn’t the service free? My EasyCard was still charged NT$20,” said 33-year-old Taipei resident Chiu Yun-hsin (邱雲欣), who transferred at Minquan W Road and Zhongxiao Xinsheng stations to reach Zhongxiao Fuxing from Yuanshan Station.
Yang Tai-liang (楊泰良), director of Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation’s (TRTC) station affairs, said the free service would be limited to the Luzhou line. EasyCard holders who transfer to other lines will be charged for the rest of the ride.
Some passengers also complained about the cramped space at Minquan W Road Station and Zhongxiao Xinsheng Station.
With the special municipality elections drawing closer, the launch ceremony was packed with politicians, with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), joined by Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋), using the occasion to endorse Hau’s municipal performance.
Former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who once served as chairman of the TRTC, led a group of DPP Taipei City councilors to attend the ceremony.
Ma, a former Taipei mayor, lauded Hau for continuing the city’s cooperation with Taipei County that began under his administration to extend the MRT lines and work on other municipal projects.
Yu, on the other hand, slammed the city government for taking nine years to finish construction of the line.
Brushing aside DPP criticism over Hau’s rushing the operation date and offering the free trial-run to garner support for his re-election, Ma urged all politicians to work together to improve the nation.
Connecting the opening of the line to the Taipei International Flora Expo, which officially opens on Saturday, Hau encouraged visitors to the expo to use the MRT and promised to raise the city’s competitiveness.
Construction on the line began in 2002 and it includes 11 stations. It will take about 19 minutes to get from Luzhou to Zhongxiao Xinsheng Station and about 21 minutes from Luzhou to Taipei Main Station, transfer time not included.
TRTC general manager Tsai Huei-sheng (蔡輝昇) said more than 200,000 commuters are expected to use the line each day and annual MRT ridership is expected to reach 500 million next year.
Service on the line will be free until Dec. 2, a move that has been criticized by some as a gambit to garner support for Hau in the Nov. 27 election.
Before the line’s launch ceremony, about 20 activists from the Losheng Youth Alliance threw mud outside Daqiaotou Station as they protested against construction of the MRT Xinzhuang (Sinjhuang) Line’s maintenance depot, which they said had caused cracks to develop at the Losheng Sanatorium’s residential buildings.
The group urged the Taipei City Government not to forget about this issue as well as to suspend the construction of the depot until a geographic report is conducted.
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