The Taipei City Government will work with city bus companies to ease traffic congestion during the Lunar New Year holiday by increasing the number of buses operating during the six-day period, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said yesterday as he inspected the traffic around Taipei City Hall Bus Station.
Hau took the opportunity to distribute red envelops to passengers and assure them that the traffic situation would be under control so they can return home without too much delay.
The station at the intersection of Keelung Road and Zhongxiao E Road was crowded yesterday afternoon, with people leaving Taipei for the holidays.
Photo: CNA
Traffic during the holiday is expected to peak during 9am and 2pm today, with more than 1,200 buses set to pass through the station, said Chen Rong-ming (陳榮明), a division chief at Taipei’s Department of Transportation.
Officials expect traffic to peak again on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Taipei Bus Transfer Center near the Taipei Railway Station is expected to see about 3,000 buses pass through it over the next six days.
Bus companies have set up drop-off points outside the transfer center that were to be opened starting yesterday.
Chen said the amount of passengers at the two bus stations would not be overwhelming and the temporary drop-off points would ensure the smooth flow of traffic.
Capital Bus Co general manager Lee Chien-wen (李建文) said the company has also shortened the intervals between buses to one minute and limited wait times to 20 minutes or less.
The bus station near Taipei City Hall will offer shorter services between Taipei and Keelung, Yilan, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli and Greater Taichung, with more than 1,700 buses from 14 bus companies set to travel in and out of the station every day.
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:
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