Minister of Transportation and Communications Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) yesterday defended the ministry’s decision to cancel “toll-free” hours on freeways at night during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, adding that it would consult experts and formulate more effective measures to divert freeway traffic.
The Ministry of Transportion and Communications (MOTC) used to waive tolls on freeways between 11pm and 6am during major national holidays as part of measures to ease daytime traffic.
The policy was canceled soon after Hochen took office on May 20 on the grounds that statistics showed that traffic accidents were more likely to occur at night.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
Hochen said the government should not encourage people to drive at night by giving them incentives like waiving toll fees.
To compensate, the ministry persuaded freeway bus operators to offer discounts to passengers to encourage more people to leave their cars at home and use public transportation instead.
The ministry said that it was still testing if waiving tolls at night would motivate more people to drive during the day, adding that the results from the Dragon Boat Festival holiday would help it determine if the new policy should be implemented for future major holidays.
However, many drivers on the first day of the holiday said that they were stuck in traffic for more than three hours.
Hochen said the congestion was only in certain sections, adding that media reports had been blown out of proportion.
The new policy was under scrutiny again at the legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday, when Hochen was scheduled to brief lawmakers about the results of the trial.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators Liu Chao-hao (劉櫂豪), Cheng Pao-ching (鄭寶清) and Lee Kun-tse (李昆澤) told Hochen that his position is similar to that of a starting pitcher in a baseball game: He has lost one point for the traffic situation and should not lose any more, they said.
Hochen said the ministry is focused on enforcing the freeway policy and it also introduced a real-name policy for passengers purchasing railway tickets to the east coast and encouraged people to take public transport.
“Some people worried that the new policy might motivate drivers who would normally have driven at night to drive during the day. What we saw was that the overall traffic volume on freeways increased dramatically, and it was not obvious if that stated problem actually exists. However, some drivers thought it would be a problem, so they took to the road early and consequently caused peak traffic to begin earlier than usual. This is a fact,” he said.
Apart from homeward-bound travelers, Hochen said the ministry’s analysis showed that heavy freeway traffic was also caused by low fuel prices.
All these factors explained why southbound traffic on the first day of the holiday was worse than last year, Hochen said, adding that the percentage of daytime crashes was about the same as last year, while the number of crashes at night actually increased.
As to whether the ministry would introduce other measures to further divide traffic flow during holidays, Hochen said it would not use its own presumptions and would entrust a group of experts with the task of analyzing statistics provided by the ministry and making suggestions accordingly.
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