A plan to add direct trains between Daan (大安站) and Xinbeitou (新北投站) stations cannot be approved because the noise on trial runs exceeded maximum allowed levels, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said on Saturday.
Passengers taking the Tamsui-Xinyi Line (淡水信義線), also known as the Red Line, to and from Xinbeitou station must transfer at Beitou station (北投站), while the trains running between Xinbeitou and Beitou stations only have three compartments.
The noise on trial runs of six-compartment trains between Daan and Xinbeitou stations did not comply with the Noise Control Standards (噪音管制標準), so the plan was not approved by the Taipei City Government, the company said.
The plan was proposed by the wardens of Beitou District’s (北投) Changan (長安), Zhonghxin (中心), Wenquan (溫泉) and Linquan (林泉) boroughs in a meeting with Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) in May.
Following Ko’s instructions, TRTC evaluated the proposal and conducted test runs on June 20.
The noise standards allow a noise level of no more than 85 decibels, with an average continuous sound level of no more than 65 decibels, but the noise levels of nearly half of the test runs exceeded the maximum allowed noise levels, the company said.
The noise levels cannot be improved through engineering due to structural load limits, it said, adding that changing the trains from three compartments to six extended the noise and vibrations that residents on the line were exposed to.
The trial runs resulted in a substantial increase in noise and vibration complaints — from one complaint per month to 100 complaints on the day of the trial, as well as 40 complaints that the time needed to run the trial caused more crowding on the regular runs between Beitou and Xinbeitou stations, it added.
The noise caused by the three-compartment trains was tested on June 21, with the levels falling below the maximum allowed levels, it said, adding that the service would continue to use the three-compartment trains.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift