Residents living near the National Palace Museum in Taipei yesterday expressed their concerns about the increase in heavy traffic and air pollution as a result of the museum’s escalating visitor numbers.
The group raised their concerns at an environmental impact assessment (EIA) meeting held yesterday, which discussed the government’s expansion project for the museum.
Under the Grand National Palace Museum Project, the museum footprint is to increase to 15.8 hectares, with an additional 4.8-hectare creative park.
The project aims to expand what the museum says is limited display space for its collection of artifacts and to accommodate the rapidly increasing number of visitors in recent years.
The project was ordered to go into a second-phase EIA for further review last year.
During the meeting yesterday morning, a local resident said that the number of museum visitors has reached more than 7 million annually, mainly from China.
Residents feel there is no “low season” for the museum and that the heavy traffic and air pollution brought by visitors are worsening.
Another resident said that the air-quality data was collected from just two monitoring stations at two nearby high school campuses, which cannot reflect the air pollution in the heavily trafficked areas.
They also expressed concerns over potential construction dust once the expansion project begins.
An EIA meeting committee member said that air quality in northern Taiwan is usually the worst during winter, due to relatively dry weather, sandstorms and haze from China.
The meeting concluded that the project’s air-quality monitoring should be conducted during the Lunar New Year holiday period — a peak season for the museum — and two more data collection stations should be installed.
It also concluded that a few monitoring stations should be set up to collect data on noise and vibration in the area.
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