The remaining Greyhound buses that are still in use are scheduled to cease operating on Thursday next week after being in service for 37 years, according to Kuo Kuang Motor Transportation Corp.
The freeway bus operator said that it would sell Greyhound bus tickets to people wanting to keep them as memorabilia. Meanwhile, two Greyhound buses are to go on display at its bus depot near the Taipei Railway Station. One of them is the first Greyhound bus in the nation, which was remodeled to carry 20 bicycles and 20 passengers. The other one is to be converted into an art gallery, showcasing various photographs of Greyhound buses taken over the past 37 years.
In addition, five Greyhound buses are to be used to carry people who wish to have one last ride on them. People must to reserve tickets for the bus tours, which are to travel between Taipei Railway Station and Dajia Riverside Park.
Company manager Wu Chung-si (吳忠錫) said that the National Sun Yat-Sen Freeway (National Freeway No. 1) was opened for traffic in 1978 and the Directorate General of Highways (DGH), which owned the company at the time, purchased 50 Greyhound buses from Des Plaines, Illinois-based Motor Coach Industries, Wu said.
Wu said Greyhound buses were renamed Kuo Kuang coaches, which literally means the “glory of the nation.” They were used to carry passengers from Taipei to Kaohsiung and were the main means of transportation connecting the north to the south due to limited rail transport capacity at the time, he said.
Wu said that the company had owned 480 Greyhound buses, adding that the coaches were not as fuel-efficient as other buses and are expensive to maintain.
“Other buses can run 3km to 4.5km on one liter of gasoline, but Greyhound buses can only run 1km per liter. We also had to import vehicle parts from the US, so maintenance costs of Greyhound buses were three to four times higher than those of other buses,” Wu said.
He said the company phased out the use of the buses, adding that the number of Greyhound buses was down to 300 by 2010.
Kuo Kuang coaches were known for employing female service attendants onboard.
A military affairs official claimed that the buses’ engines could be removed and reinstalled in military tanks, so when the nation severed official diplomatic ties with the US in 1979, the government bought more Greyhound buses to beef up supplies of back-up engines for tanks.
Wu said that the number of the Greyhound buses dwindled to 33 last year. Fourteen are still being used to carry passengers between Taipei and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
He said that the company would keep five buses to provide tours for bus fans, while others would be donated to the DGH for public display. The rest would be sold, Wu said, adding that the body of a Greyhound bus is worth NT$600,000 to NT$700,000.
The Taipei Summer Festival is to begin tomorrow at Dadaocheng Wharf (大稻埕), featuring four themed firework shows and five live music performances throughout the month, the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism said today. The festival in the city’s Datong District (大同) is to run until Aug. 30, holding firework displays on Wednesdays and the final Saturday of the event. The first show is scheduled for tomorrow, followed by Aug. 13, 20 and 30. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Disney Pixar's movie Toy Story, the festival has partnered with Walt Disney Co (Taiwan) to host a special themed area on
BE CAREFUL: The virus rarely causes severe illness or death, but newborns, older people and those with medical conditions are at risk of more severe illness As more than 7,000 cases of chikungunya fever have been reported in China’s Guangdong Province this year, including 2,892 new cases last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday said it is monitoring the situation and considering raising the travel notice level, which might be announced today. The CDC issued a level 1 travel notice, or “watch,” for Guangdong Province on July 22, citing an outbreak in Foshan, a manufacturing hub in the south of the province, that was reported early last month. Between July 27 and Saturday, the province reported 2,892 new cases of chikungunya, reaching a total of 7,716
Aftershocks from a magnitude 6.2 earthquake that struck off Yilan County at 3:45pm yesterday could reach a magnitude of 5 to 5.5, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Seismological Center technical officer Chiu Chun-ta (邱俊達) told a news conference that the epicenter of the temblor was more than 100km from Taiwan. Although predicted to measure between magnitude 5 and 5.5, the aftershocks would reach an intensity of 1 on Taiwan’s 7-tier scale, which gauges the actual effect of an earthquake, he said. The earthquake lasted longer in Taipei because the city is in a basin, he said. The quake’s epicenter was about 128.9km east-southeast
STAY VIGILANT: People should reduce the risk of chronic liver inflammation by avoiding excessive alcohol consumption, smoking and eating pickled foods, the physician said A doctor last week urged people to look for five key warning signs of acute liver failure after popular producer-turned-entertainer Shen Yu-lin (沈玉琳) was reportedly admitted to an intensive care unit for fulminant hepatitis. Fulminant hepatitis is the rapid and massive death of liver cells, impairing the organ’s detoxification, metabolic, protein synthesis and bile production functions, which if left untreated has a mortality rate as high as 80 percent, according to the Web site of Advancing Clinical Treatment of Liver Disease, an international organization focused on liver disease prevention and treatment. People with hepatitis B or C are at higher risk of
RSS