A “severe test” awaits commuters returning to work today after the nine-day Lunar New Year holiday, as a new road construction project is to begin following the demolition of a Zhongxiao Bridge (忠孝橋) onramp next to the Taipei Railway Station, former Taipei City Government Department of Transportation commissioner Jason Lin (林志盈) said yesterday.
“Forgive me for being pessimistic, but the New Taipei City Government already foresees traffic backups of up to 5km or even 10km on connecting roads to Zhongxiao Bridge, Zhongxing Bridge (中興橋) and Taipei Bridge at New Taipei City’s end,” he said on Facebook.
In Taipei, commuters should expect traffic jams on Civic Boulevard, the Huanhe Expressway and the above-mentioned three bridges, he added.
Photo: CNA
Lin said completion of the demolition project on Saturday would increase traffic on Taipei’s Zhongxiao E Road and Zhongxiao W Road, as two of three public works projects designed to alleviate such pressures have been delayed.
The opening of the MRT rail link from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, originally scheduled for 2014, would have increased public transportation available between Taipei Railway Station and New Taipei City’s Sanchong (三重), Sinjhuang (新莊), Wugu (五股) and Taishan (泰山) districts, Lin said.
Also incomplete is a dedicated bus lane near the Taipei West Bus Station on Zhongxiao W Road, which was meant to increase the efficiency of municipal buses, commercial buses using the highway toward Hsinchu City and vehicular traffic on Zhongxiao E Road and Zhongxiao W Road, Lin said.
Only one of three associated construction projects — the MRT Songshan Line — has been completed on time, which is not enough to avert congestion, he said.
While complementing city officials and workers for finishing the demolition project during the limited time available, Lin said that directing traffic would prove “as challenging as the demolition itself,” adding that the two delayed projects could not be completed sooner than next year.
Lin said he hopes he is proved wrong, but that, in his opinion, existing measures are inadequate to relieve traffic congestion, and called on the public to use public transportation and to pay attention to traffic reports to avoid congestion.
“We will know on Monday how long the traffic backups will get,” he said.
The Taipei Department of Transportation urged commuters to depart 20 minutes earlier to avoid delays, while Taipei Mayor Ko We-je (柯文哲) published a traffic diversion plan on Facebook.
“The traffic diversion plan has been released to save time for everyone as [today] is the first working day after the demolition” of the onramp, Ko said.
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
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the