Weekday visits to the Taiwan Lantern Festival would help ease the unprecedented congestion seen on Saturday at Wuri (烏日) Railway Station, Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday.
Lin posted the message on Facebook after an estimated 1.5 million visitors on Saturday swamped the station in the Taichung suburban district, which serves the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) and the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC).
The massive crowd at the station drove the city government to broadcast — via television and radio stations — a request for guests not to attend the festival.
“We want to tell people interested in coming to the festival that they would appreciate the festival much better and help ease the transportation load if they arrive on weekdays instead,” he said.
Passengers first descended on the station at about 7pm, when many visitors who had come early to see the lanterns during the day were about to leave, Lin said.
When more visitors came to see the illuminated lanterns at night, the station was filled with thousands of people, he added.
To better control crowd movement in the station, the city government decided to open only Exit 3 in Wuri Station to allow visitors to enter the exhibition area, Lin said. Those wanting to re-enter the station could do so through Exit 4, he added.
The crowd reappeared at the station at 10pm, when most visitors were leaving the exhibition area.
In addition to increasing the frequency of train services, Taichung has boosted shuttle services to the city center to help transport visitors.
The visiting hours for the lantern festival were also pushed back from 11pm to 11:30pm.
To avoid a recurrence of Saturday night’s congestion, the Taichung government yesterday asked the TRA to increase train service to Wuri, and 20 tour buses have been asked to stand by to help transport travelers to Taichung Railway Station if Wuri station gets overcrowded.
The festival is to end on Sunday.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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