The Taian Freeway Service Area (泰安休息站) on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1) on Saturday restarted operations under a new contractor following first-phase facility renovations, the Freeway Bureau said yesterday.
The service area, which was previously operated by Nanren Lake Enterprise, is expected to generate annual revenue of NT$400 million (US$12.70 million), the bureau said.
On March 1, President Chain Store Corp won the contract to operate businesses in the service area following an open review of all interested companies, it said.
The service area has been in operation since 1978 and is an important stop for southbound drivers, the bureau said.
To renovate its outdated facilities, the bureau outsourced its operations under a reconstruction-operation-transfer model, in which the contractor would be given permission to rebuild or renovate the facilities and operate the service area for a certain period before transferring it back to the government.
The new contractor has brought Starbucks and McDonald’s outlets to the service area, marking the first time that the area attracted investments from international fast food and coffee chains, the bureau said.
The contractor has also provided some innovative services, it said.
To help reduce accidents caused by fatigue, drivers can take naps for up to two hours in the capsule beds installed at the facility, it said.
Muslim travelers can use separate prayer rooms for men and women, the bureau said, adding that the prayer rooms have two prayer mats each and prayer schedules.
The contractor is also planning to offer halal-certified food, it 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