Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) officials yesterday apologized for delays to the MRT system’s connection to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport that set the project completion date back by six months.
Bowing at a news conference, Deputy Minister of Transportation and Commuications Tseng Dar-jen (曾大仁), Bureau of High Speed Rail Director-General Allen Hu (胡湘麟) and bureau chief engineer Chung Wei-li (鍾維力) apologized, saying that the launch date for the airport MRT line would be delayed.
It was the sixth delay since the project was announced in 2002. The project is to connect the airport directly to the MRT’s Taipei Main Station, stopping at Jhongli Township (中壢) and the Taoyuan High Speed Rail Station.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
The MRT line is still undergoing trial runs and the primary reason for its delay is six of the 46 test items failing to meet contract standards, Hu told the news conference.
According to the contract, terminal-to-terminal MRT trains must travel at an average speed of 60kph, while trains that stop at each station must travel at an average speed of 45kph.
The trains currently travel at 57km and 42km per hour respectively, Hu said.
The speed has affected the expected time of arrival of trains on one-way trips, which was set at 35 minutes from Taipei Main Station to Taoyuan airport, the ministry said, adding that the line took 36 to 37 minutes to make a single one-way trip.
The time between trains, standing at three minutes and 15 seconds, does not meet the three minutes stated in the contract, Hu said.
While the bureau constructed the line, Taoyuan Metro Corp was expected to handle the line’s operations, the ministry said, adding that both sides were at odds on how to conduct simulated service and trial runs.
The bureau wanted Taoyuan Metro Corp to allocate more personnel for the trial runs in the hopes of becoming more familiar with the system, the ministry said, adding that the company was adamant that it would start simulated services only after all of the trial runs meet contract standards.
The ministry said that if all goes according to plan, the line could start operating at the end of the year, but due to previous letdowns it was not going to set a date for the commencement of services.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS