The New Taipei City (新北市) Government yesterday pledged to continue its plans to construct a Minsheng-Xizhi line of the Taipei mass rapid transit (MRT) system despite the plan being rejected by the central government.
The city government said it would provide further evidence of the plan’s viability.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications rejected the project on Feb. 16, saying the city government had failed to provide estimates of the external benefits of the MRT line, such as urban renewal, land development and increased revenue.
The city government will re-examine the project and try to raise its self-liquidating ratio by 2 to 3 percentage points from about 30 percent to meet the ministry’s requirements, acting commissioner of the city’s Transportation Bureau Simon Chao (趙紹廉) said.
“We will never give up on the Minsheng-Xizhi Line,” he said, adding that the project is a crucial part of New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) political platform.
It would be the first line to be built under the newly sworn-in Chu and is expected to begin at Dadaocheng Station beneath Minsheng West Road in Taipei City and extend beneath the Keelung River to Neihu District.
The total length of the line will be 17.52km, with 15 stations and one depot, to be built at a cost of NT$42.2 billion (US$1.44 billion).
During his mayoral election campaign last year, Chu proposed extending the MRT system by creating 10 new lines, including three circular routes.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked