Construction for Taipei’s new Wanda (萬大) MRT line is to take four times longer than other MRT lines, Taipei’s Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS) said yesterday.
The department said it estimated that the Wanda line would take eight years to construct, compared with two years for a typical MRT line.
Plans approved by the Executive Yuan envision a line running through Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華) and looping through several districts of New Taipei City to link with the Huilong (迴龍) terminal station of the Zhonghe-Xinzhuang-Luzhou Orange Line.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
A second ground-breaking ceremony for the line was held in Taipei yesterday, following a ceremony in New Taipei City last month.
Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said at the event that the Wanda line’s aim was different from previous lines, which focused on providing more convenient transportation to business districts.
“The Wanda line will run deeply into less developed districts,” Jiang said.
“The fact that it will bring economic development to the area around each station is even more important than its ability to provide a clean and efficient form of transportation,” he said.
Despite the project’s importance, it has been plagued with difficulties since its inception more than nine years ago, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said, adding that the dense population along the line’s route creates numerous engineering challenges.
The department said that the narrow roads under which the line would be constructed drastically reduce the availability of above-ground construction space, forcing the department to use painstaking tunneling methods for most of the line’s length.
Besides creating engineering difficulties, the narrow roads would also strictly limit the line’s size, with its final capacity significantly lower than most of Taipei’s current MRT lines, it added.
The line would feature the smallest station in the city’s MRT system, to avoid unnecessary impact on an important archaeological site near the Taipei Botanical Garden, the department said, adding that completing archaeological excavations during construction would further slow the line’s progress.
Liu Yi-chang (劉益昌), a professor of history and philology at Academia Sinica, said the ancient Aboriginal village through which the line would pass is one of the most significant archeological sites in Taipei.
Due to the village’s 4,000 years of history, different layers of cultural artifacts are found as deep as 6m, he said.
A preclearance service to facilitate entry for people traveling to select airports in Japan would be available from Thursday next week to Feb. 25 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Taoyuan International Airport Corp (TIAC) said on Tuesday. The service was first made available to Taiwanese travelers throughout the winter vacation of 2024 and during the Lunar New Year holiday. In addition to flights to the Japanese cities of Hakodate, Asahikawa, Akita, Sendai, Niigata, Okayama, Takamatsu, Kumamoto and Kagoshima, the service would be available to travelers to Kobe and Oita. The service can be accessed by passengers of 15 flight routes operated by
GIVE AND TAKE: Blood demand continues to rise each year, while fewer young donors are available due to the nation’s falling birthrate, a doctor said Blood donors can redeem points earned from donations to obtain limited edition Formosan black bear travel mugs, the Kaohsiung Blood Center said yesterday, as it announced a goal of stocking 20,000 units of blood prior to the Lunar New Year. The last month of the lunar year is National Blood Donation Month, when local centers seek to stockpile blood for use during the Lunar New Year holiday. The blood demand in southern Taiwan — including Tainan and Kaohsiung, as well as Chiayi, Pingtung, Penghu and Taitung counties — is about 2,000 units per day, the center said. The donation campaign aims to boost
ENHANCING EFFICIENCY: The apron can accommodate 16 airplanes overnight at Taoyuan airport while work on the third runway continues, the transport minister said A new temporary overnight parking apron at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport is to start operating on Friday next week to boost operational efficiency while the third runway is being constructed, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday. The apron — one of the crucial projects in the construction of the third runway — can accommodate 16 aircraft overnight at the nation’s largest international airport, Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told reporters while inspecting the new facility yesterday morning. Aside from providing the airport operator with greater flexibility in aircraft parking during the third runway construction,
MORE FALL: An investigation into one of Xi’s key cronies, part of a broader ‘anti-corruption’ drive, indicates that he might have a deep distrust in the military, an expert said China’s latest military purge underscores systemic risks in its shift from collective leadership to sole rule under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), and could disrupt its chain of command and military capabilities, a national security official said yesterday. If decisionmaking within the Chinese Communist Party has become “irrational” under one-man rule, the Taiwan Strait and the regional situation must be approached with extreme caution, given unforeseen risks, they added. The anonymous official made the remarks as China’s Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia (張又俠) and Joint Staff Department Chief of Staff Liu Zhenli (劉振立) were reportedly being investigated for suspected “serious
RSS