Traffic moved slowly on several sections of the northbound freeways in northern and central Taiwan yesterday as thousands of people returned home on the final day of the three-day Dragon Boat Festival weekend.
Traffic began to slow in some sections of freeways in the north after 2pm, including the section between the Toucheng (頭城) Interchange and Pinglin (坪林) on Freeway No. 5.
By 4:30pm, slow traffic was also reported between the Jhongli (中壢) and Pingjhen (平鎮) interchanges and between Hsinchu and Chubei (竹北) on Freeway No. 1, as well as between the Chulin (竹林) interchange and Hsinchu on Freeway 3. Speeds in these sections slowed to between 20kph and 40kph.
Photo: Chen Wei-jen, Taipei Times
Aside from congestion in those sections, speeds in other areas were between 60kph and 80kph.
To ease freeway traffic during the holiday, the National Freeway Bureau had announced that no tolls would be collected from 12am to 7am during the three-day holiday.
The measure helped divert part of the traffic. Bureau statistics showed that 225,000 motor vehicles used the freeways during the toll-free hours yesterday, or 1.4 times more than traffic volume on regular weekends.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
Statistics from the bureau also showed that freeway traffic volume on the first two days surpassed 2 million vehicles.
A total of 2.23 million vehicles used the freeways on Saturday.
Traffic volume was reported to have reached 2.16 million yesterday.
Photo: Liu Hsiao-hsin, Taipei Times
Travel volume on Saturday and Sunday also registered a 39 percent and 35 percent increase respectively from yearly average traffic volume.
The bureau attributed relatively smoother traffic on the final day of the holiday to motorists choosing to return home on Sunday.
It estimated that traffic volume yesterday also surpassed 2 million vehicles.
Meanwhile, the bureau activated meters at interchanges to regulate freeway traffic.
Some of the shoulder lanes on Freeway No. 3 were also opened for traffic from 7am to 7pm yesterday, including the southbound lanes from Dashi (大溪) and Longtan (龍潭) and the northbound lanes from Wufong (霧峰) to the Jhongtou (中投) interchange.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods