A lawmaker yesterday cited construction flaws and questioned the construction quality management for the Wugu-Yangmei Overpass (五楊高架橋) as government officials reassured the public that it would not be opened before a re-examination had been completed.
The overpass connecting Wugu (五股) in New Taipei City (新北市) and Yangmei (楊梅) in Taoyuan County is about 40km long.
It will run parallel to Freeway No. 1 to ease congestion during peak hours.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
An onsite investigation found eight construction flaws, including exposed steel bars and exposed pre-stressed concrete steel tendons, in a stretch of less than 1km of the overpass, which is scheduled to open on Monday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) told a press conference yesterday.
“The overpass’ construction quality is highly questionable and if the Ministry of Transportation and Communications insist on opening the overpass as scheduled, public safety would be of great concern,” Kuan said.
Civil engineers have examined photographs taken at the construction site and warned that the defects could lead to structural safety concerns, affecting the strength and longevity of the overpass, Kuan said.
DPP Legislator Lee Kun-tse (李昆澤), convener of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, said there had been too many accidents during the construction project and said he planned to ask the minister of Transportation and Communications to make a report to the committee.
National Expressway Engineering Bureau chief engineer Lu Jieh-bin (呂介斌) said that the overpass would not be opened to the public before the construction flaws had been rectified.
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