The Puyuma Express tilting train will begin its pilot service today after passing an independent verification and validation (IV&V) process by the UK-based Lloyd’s Register Group, the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) said yesterday.
“To ensure that the train fulfills safety regulations in its design and test runs, we asked an independent third party to execute the IV&V procedure,” the agency said.
The TRA expected to receive confirmation of the safety certification on Monday, but it did not arrive until 10am yesterday.
Photo: Wang yi-sung, Taipei Times
It said the delay was caused by the time difference between Taiwan and the UK, adding that its officials had stayed up late on Monday night to provide the supplementary documents requested by Lloyd’s.
The TRA has scheduled the pilot service to depart Shulin (樹林), New Taipei City (新北市), at 9:20am and arrive at Taipei Main Station at 9:40am, Songshan Station at 9:48am, Yilan station at 10:52am, Luodong (羅東) station in Yilan County at 11am and Hualien station at 11:50am.
The TRA ordered 136 tilting carriages from Nippon Sharyo, 16 of which were delivered at the end of last year.
To handle the expected crowds during the Lunar New Year holiday, the agency said eight trains would pass the IV&V procedure and start operating before the holiday begins on Saturday.
To reassure the public about the safety of the Puyuma Express, the TRA has made public the IV&V certification documents from Nippon Sharyo and Lloyd’s Register Group.
The TRA said the Puyuma Express allows for 56 runs to be added to the schedule between today and Feb. 18, providing an additional 2,000 seats per day.
However, tickets for the Puyuma Express during the nine-day-long Lunar New Year holiday have already sold out, the TRA said.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B