Kaohsiung is launching a three-month free public transportation program today to combat the heavy air pollution that often plagues the city at this time of year.
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) at a news conference on Tuesday announced that public transportation will be free for all electronic ticket users.
The program, proposed by the Kaohsiung Environmental Protection Bureau, allows users of electronic tickets, such as iPASS or EasyCard, to take city buses, intercity buses and light-rail trains for free, Chen said.
Photo: CNA
Electronic ticket users can ride the Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit (KMRT) system for free on weekdays from 6:30am to 8:30am and from 4:30pm to 6:30pm, she said.
Air pollution in Kaohsiung is particularly severe from December to February, Chen said, adding that the city government has been trying to address the problem by encouraging people to use public transportation.
Bureau Director Tsai Meng-yu (蔡孟裕) said the program is the first of its kind in Taiwan and would cost about NT$200 million (US$6.66 million).
The program could increase ridership on city buses by 1.76 million users, on intercity buses by 70,000 and on the KMRT by 1.6 million, Tsai said, adding that it is projected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 16,000 tonnes.
City officials yesterday said that 65 percent of the city’s air pollution comes from overseas, with factories (38 percent), construction sites (24 percent) and vehicles (38 percent) accounting for the remaining 35 percent of pollution that is produced locally.
The bureau said it has managed to control all sources of pollution except vehicles, which is why it was introducing the free public transportation program.
In related news, poor air quality in southern Taiwan is expected to continue into the weekend, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday, urging sensitive groups to avoid outdoor activities as a precaution.
As of noon yesterday, air quality in the north, particularly in Taoyuan, Hsinchu County and Miaoli County and central Taiwan, had improved significantly from Wednesday, when most of the nation was subject to high levels of PM2.5 — airborne particles measuring 2.5 micrometers or less — the EPA’s Taiwan Air Quality Monitoring Network showed.
The Air Quality Index (AQI) was green (good air quality) or yellow (fair to good) in those areas.
However, the AQI remained orange at six monitoring stations in the south — including Yunlin, Chiayi and Pingtung counties, as well as Tainan and Kaohsiung — meaning that the air quality in those areas remains unhealthy.
A red index was recorded at 12 monitoring stations in those areas, indicating that the poor air quality poses a threat to sensitive groups such as children, seniors and people with heart, respiratory and cardiovascular ailments.
With the red index expected to remain for Kaohsiung and Pingtung until tomorrow, the EPA advised residents in those areas to minimize physical activities if they experience eye irritation, coughing or a sore throat, or to wear a mask when outdoors.
The EPA’s AQI takes into account ozone, PM2.5 and PM10 particulates, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitric oxide concentrations in the air.
Additional reporting by Ko Yu-hao
The Council of Agriculture yesterday signed a Taiwan-Australia Agricultural Cooperation Implementation clause to open a new export market for the nation’s pineapple crop. The clause is an addition to existing cooperation measures, it said. China on Friday last week abruptly announced that it would suspend pineapple imports from Taiwan starting on Monday, on grounds that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful organisms” in shipments of the fruit. The public and private sectors have since joined hands to purchase the local fruit to help the nation’s pineapple farmers. Canberra has requested that all pineapples for export to Australia have their crown buds removed,
A Tainan taxi driver is the Taiwanese with the longest name, after he last month changed it so that it now contains 25 characters, the Anping District Household Registration Office said. The 47-year-old man, formerly known as Huang Hsin-hsiang (黃鑫翔), applied for the name change on Feb. 26, in the hope that it would bring him good luck. His new name starts with Huang Da-lan (黃大嵐) and adds another 22 characters, meaning “Huang Da-lan is the blessed darling and sweetheart of the god of joy, god of wealth, god of misfortune, god of Earth and all the gods,” it said. With
POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS: As China attempted to promote its national image through humanitarian aid, its targets include New Southbound Policy countries, an expert said China’s “vaccine diplomacy,” which has become central to its foreign policy this year, might hamper Taiwan’s efforts to build relations with developing countries, an expert said. “China, as one of the few countries other than the United Kingdom and the United States to have produced a COVID-19 vaccine, will certainly use that as a diplomatic tool,” said Kung Shan-son (龔祥生), an assistant research fellow at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research. Beijing’s major goals in its “vaccine diplomacy” are to promote its national image through humanitarian aid and to solidify its relations with countries that are included in its
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group might have lost its right to distribute the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19 and the ability to fulfill a contract in Taiwan, civic groups Taiwan Citizen Front and the Economic Democracy Union said yesterday. In a radio interview on Feb. 17, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the Central Epidemic Command Center, said that last year, Taiwan was close to signing a contract to buy doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but that the deal was halted at the last moment, with some speculating that Chinese interference was to blame. On Monday last week, the center