To ease daytime traffic during the four-day New Year holiday, national freeways are to be toll-free from 12am to 5am from tomorrow to Monday, and from 12am to 10pm on Tuesday, transportation authorities said yesterday.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications presented to the Cabinet a series of measures to manage the high traffic volume that is expected during the holiday, which for the first time extends the toll-free period on the last day of the holiday.
Southbound traffic is expected to peak tomorrow, the first day of the holiday, while the same is expected of northbound traffic on Monday, Department of Railways and Highways Director-General Chen Wen-ruey (陳文瑞) said at a news conference in Taipei after the Cabinet meeting.
From 7am to noon tomorrow, only vehicles with three or more occupants will be allowed on Sun Yat-sen Freeway’s (Freeway No. 1) southbound lanes between Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) and Miaoli County’s Toufen (頭份), as well as southbound lanes between Taipei’s Muzha (木柵) and Hsinchu City’s Xiangshan District (香山) on Formosa Freeway (Freeway No. 3), he said.
The same rule would apply to southbound lanes between Nangang District (南港) in Taipei and Pinglin District (坪林) in New Taipei City on Chiang Wei-shui Memorial Freeway (Freeway No. 5) from 7am to noon tomorrow and on Sunday, Chen said.
Vehicle occupancy controls will also be in place from 2pm to 9pm on Monday and Tuesday on all northbound onramps between Yilan County’s Suao (蘇澳) and Toucheng (頭城) townships on Chiang Wei-shui Memorial Freeway, he added.
At usual traffic bottlenecks on freeways going south tomorrow and north on Monday, there could be as much as three to six times the usual volume of traffic, he said.
Southbound onramps on the Pingjhen (平鎮) system in Taoyuan County and Puyan (埔鹽) system in Changhua County on Sun Yat-sen Freeway will be closed for 48 hours starting at midnight tomorrow, he added.
Northbound onramps pm the Huwei (虎尾) system in Yunlin County and Puyan system on Sun Yat-sen Freeway, as well as the Jhunan (竹南) system in Miaoli County on Formosa Freeway, are to be closed for 48 hours from Monday midnight to control traffic flow, he said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai