Taipei’s MRT Xinzhuang Line, a high-capacity underground extension of the Zhonghe Line, is expected to launch service ahead of schedule in January as Taipei City’s Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS) began its preliminary inspection process yesterday.
Part of the line from Zhongxiao Xinsheng Station to Daqiaotou Station began operating in November last year along with the Luzhou Line. The section between Daqiaotou Station and Fu Jen Catholic University Station was previously scheduled to go into service in March next year.
The department yesterday invited an inspection committee of transportation and civil engineering experts to conduct a two-day inspection of the engineering, equipment installation and operation of the system.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
The committee visited the line’s Fu Jen Catholic University Station and three other stations yesterday afternoon and was scheduled to continue its inspection today before announcing their findings.
Committee members were satisfied with the equipment installation inside the stations, but suggested that the department expand the pavement along the stations and improve the overall environment outside the stations.
Taipei City’s Department of Transportation Commissioner Jason Lin (林志盈) said construction of the line was completed in accordance with the construction schedule and the system reliability has reached 99 percent following a system test.
DORTS will conduct a final inspection next month before sending the results to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications for final approval.
According to DORTS, the launch of the line will help ease traffic in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Sanchong (三重) and Sinjhuang (新莊) districts, which have a combined population of about 800,000 people.
After the launch of the 8.2 km section, the commute between Fu Jen Catholic University Station and Minquan W Road Station will only be about 17 minutes, while it is estimated it will take about 24 minutes to travel from Fu Jen Catholic University Station to Zhongxiao Xinsheng Station.
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