Construction of the new Fengyuan Railway Station in Greater Taichung is scheduled to be completed by 2016, which could stimulate development in the area, the Railway Reconstruction Bureau said yesterday.
Bureau Deputy Director Zhou Yong-huei (周永暉) said the new station was part of the bureau’s Taichung Metropolitan Area Overpass Railway Project.
The overpass will be about 21km long, Zhou said. As some sections will be built above existing railway tracks, the bureau will need to switch to a temporary route for the railways to facilitate construction, he said.
The bureau mobilized 1,550 workers for the track switch project, Zhou said, which was completed on Dec. 28. Two electricity relay rooms and about 20 railway signals have also been relocated to sites near the temporary route.
Fengyuan station handles about 17,000 railway passengers each day, or half that of the Banciao Railway Station in New Taipei City (新北市). The temporary route in Fengyuan is 1.72km long, he said.
After the switch, the second platform would be torn down to build the overpass railway tracks Zhou said. Fengyuan Station will be constructed on the overpass.
An architect has been hired to do a preliminary design of the new station, Zhou said.
As Fengyuan was historically renowned for its timber, the architect designed the station using log imagery, he said.
Meanwhile, Zhou said the overpass would help eliminate 17 railway crossings along the current railway route.
Following the merger of Taichung City and Taichung County into Greater Taichung, Fengyuan Station will function as the northern branch of Taichung Railway Station, he said.
“In the past, the front and rear of Fengyuan Station were not equally developed,” Zhou said. “After the station is elevated onto the overpass, the open space under the overpass will help increase and improve traffic flow between the two areas.”
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS