The Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems yesterday said that Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) proposal to increase the number of train carriages on the MRT’s Line 1 (Wenhu Line) to alleviate traffic congestion in Neihu District (內湖) is not feasible, citing safety risks.
Department official Shih Dun-jen (史敦仁) at a monthly meeting to review the city’s transportation policies yesterday briefed Ko on the viability of increasing the number of carriages along the MRT line from four to six.
Shih said it is impossible to connect larger French-made Matra models with Canadian-made Bombardier models due to their different designs, adding that doing so would spark concerns about intellectual property rights.
He said that increasing the length of trains on the Wenhu Line would require the tracks to be reworked and the power supply system to be modified, which would disrupt the line’s operation.
He said there is no precedent of a rail operator using six Bombardier carriages in one train, adding that doing so would require a full examination of the line’s power system; otherwise, it would pose safety risks.
If all 59 trains operating on the line were to have two extra carriages, it would cost the city about NT$15 billion (US$473.6 million), he said.
The Matra carriages are scheduled for decommissioning in 2036, while the Bombardier carriages are to be retired in 2029, Shih said, adding that peak passenger volume for the line, 14,800 passengers per hour, has yet to reach the line’s capacity of 17,100 passengers per hour.
Ko said the city could start thinking about purchasing new carriages for the line in 10 years.
In other developments, the Taipei Parking Management and Development Office said it would expand a project encouraging government agencies and public schools to rent out their parking spaces at night to nearby residents.
Since the project began in 2008, 101 of the city’s 225 agencies and 66 public schools with parking lots have allowed people to rent parking spaces at night when public servants are off-duty.
The office said it plans to free up an additional 1,183 parking spaces at 21 public agencies and schools by the end of next year.
As facilities that agree to rent out parking spaces can receive up to NT$3 million in subsidies, the office plans to allocate NT$66 million for the project.
It would cost the city about NT$2.36 billion to zone out the same number of parking spaces on roadsides, the office said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching