Armed with data collected during major holidays, Minister of Transportation and Communications Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) yesterday defended the ministry’s decision to shorten the duration of freeway toll-free hours during the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival weekend, and said that motorists would not experience the severe traffic congestion typically seen on holidays.
Based on the National Freeway Bureau’s plan, the toll-free freeway hours during the four-day weekend are to be from 12am to 5am on Saturday and Tuesday next week and from 3am to 5am on Sunday and Monday.
Because the bureau estimated that southbound traffic volume would hit a historic high on the first day of the holiday, the bureau also decided to enforce high occupancy vehicle (HOV) hours from 7am to 12pm on both the Sun Yat-Sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1) and Formosa Freeway (Freeway No. 3) on Saturday.
Photo: Cheng Wei-chi, Taipei Times
Specifically, the HOV rule would apply to vehicles to pass sections between the Neihu and Toufeng interchanges on Freeway No. 1 and between Muzha and Shiangshan interchanges on Freeway No. 3.
Each vehicle must have at least three people inside before they can legally access freeways during HOV hours.
However, lawmakers on the legislature’s Transportation Committee on Monday criticized the ministry’s decision, saying motorists in the past were able to enjoy toll-free hours from 11pm to 6am the next day.
They asked the ministry to adopt the same policy for the Dragon Boat holiday this year.
Despite the criticisms, Hochen said that the toll-free hours for the Dragon Boat Festival holiday remain unchanged.
The overall traffic volume on the freeways continued to grow in recent years, he said, adding that the daily traffic volumes on long weekends or during major national holidays is about 1.5 to 2 times more than that on that of regular weekdays.
“We also see a dramatic increase in traffic volume around metropolitan areas caused by short-distance travelers, who generally account for 70 percent of the midnight drivers on the freeways,” Hochen said. “However, the toll-free hours were designed to facilitate homebound traffic for long-distance travelers by diverting traffic flows. In that case, starting the toll-free hours early would mainly benefit short-distance drivers, not long-distance drivers.”
Hochen cited data gathered on the first day of the Dragon Boat holiday last year that showed that many drivers who needed to drive farther than 100km hit the road at either 5am or 6am, meaning that they were most likely to get some sleep first before they took off.
Very few drivers began their trips at 1am or 2am, he said.
However, the same data showed that the number of mid or short-distance traffic also began to rise between 5am to 7am, Hochen said.
“We set the toll-free hours to be between 3am and 5am on Sunday and Monday because the data showed that most of the long-distance drivers would choose to depart early in the morning rather than late at night. The toll-free hours would then serve as incentives for them to leave early,” he said, adding that the death rate of late-night freeway drivers are eight times higher those driving at other times.
The other reason for setting the toll-free hours at that time was to to give long-distance drivers another choice, Hochen said, particularly for people who need to drive from Taipei to Kaohsiung.
If these drivers choose to leave after 6am, they are likely to get stuck in traffic in Hsinchu, before they are even halfway to their destination, he said, adding that people are advised to leave two or three hours early if they want to have a relatively smooth trip.
Knowing that the nation has yet to come to a consensus on this issue, Hochen said that the ministry needs to enhance its efforts to communicate with the the public.
“People need to understand that waiving the toll fees at night has proven ineffective at easing the traffic on long weekends and the nation should look for more effective solutions to divert the freeway traffic and ensure the safety of drivers using traffic data,” he said.
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