The Taipei Department of Transportation yesterday announced that it would start road tests for autonomous buses in May and allow city residents to take part in the trial services beginning in September.
The city government is looking to automated buses as a solution to the shortage of nighttime public vehicle drivers, officials from the transportation and information technology departments told a news conference.
Following the signing of a letter of intent between the city government and Turing Drive Co last year, the company submitted to the Ministry of Economic Affairs its “trial project for uncrewed vehicles with innovative technology.”
Photo courtesy of the Taipei Department of Transportation
The ministry on Feb. 3 convened a meeting to review the project and approved it on Tuesday last week.
The transportation department said it is planning to conduct road tests for autonomous buses at night on Xinyi Road, which has dedicated bus lanes, for one year.
The first phase of the project would include creating high-definition maps, installing smart devices throughout the planned route and constructing charging stations for buses, it said.
The second phase, which is to start in May, would involve engineers to test the program’s reactions to all sorts of scenarios during trial operation, it said.
The planned route is to start at the intersection of Xinyi and Zhongshan South roads and end at the intersection of Xinyi and Keelung Road, said that Chung Hui-tsun (鍾惠存), head of the transportation department’s Information and Technology Division.
The buses would switch to manual drivers at the east and west terminals to drive the vehicles back to dedicated bus lanes, he said.
The initial speed for autonomous buses would not exceed 15kph, with the tests being conducted from midnight to 2:30am, he said.
The speed and time for road tests would be adjusted accordingly throughout the trial period, with trial services commencing in September, he said.
The city government is to make the final decision on whether the buses are ready for service based on data gathered during the road-test and trial-service period, Chung added.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS