More than NT$700 million (US$25.06 million) is to be deducted from a payment to Marubeni Corp, after the Japanese firm failed to meet several criteria set in the contract for the electromechanical system of the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) line, the Railway Bureau said yesterday.
The bureau is verifying the work before giving final approval of the airport MRT line, which was launched in March 2017.
However, the contractor has not been able to meet three key criteria set in the contract: average operating speed, estimated travel time and train intervals, the bureau said.
Photo courtesy of Taoyuan Metro Corp
In February 2019, the bureau asked the Public Construction Commission to arbitrate its dispute with Marubeni.
“After Marubeni failed to meet its contractual obligations, we asked other companies for help, but none of them wanted to bid on an improvement project,” bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said.
Marubeni did not think it should be blamed for failing to address the issues, Yang added.
The bureau followed the commission’s recommendation to accept the airport MRT line at a reduced price and deducted NT$726.9 million from the payment to Marubeni, Yang said.
However, the Japanese contractor failed to respond to the commission’s recommendation before the deadline, so the dispute was not settled, Yang said.
“So far, we are sticking with the commission’s recommendation of reducing the payment when we accept the project,” Yang said. “If they do not accept the result of the arbitration and wish to fight this in court, we will respect their decision.”
Marubeni was contracted to build the electromechanical system for NT$25 billion, but has yet to be paid NT$1.1 billion.
The terms of the contract require that the line’s express train service travel from Taipei Railway Station to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport’s Terminal One in 35 minutes or less, whereas the existing travel time is 35:47 minutes to 36:59 minutes.
The contract requires an average speed of 60kph for an express train and 45kph for a regular train, but the express trains average 58.31kph to 56.46kph, while regular trains average 38.9kph to 39.57kph.
The trains are dispatched every 15 minutes, instead of every six minutes, but Marubeni has reportedly not tested if that was possible.
LEVERAGE: China did not ‘need to fire a shot’ to deny Taiwan airspace over Africa when it owns ‘half the continent’s debt,’ a US official said, calling it economic warfare The EU has raised concerns about overflight rights following the delay of President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned state visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini after three African nations denied overflight clearance for his charter at the last minute. Taiwanese allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as several US lawmakers and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries. Lai was scheduled to fly directly to Taiwan’s only African ally from yesterday to Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday, but Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar suddenly revoked
The number of pet cats in Taiwan surpassed that of pet dogs for the first time last year, reaching 1,742,033, a 32.8 percent increase from 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday, citing a survey. By contrast, the number of pet dogs declined slightly by 1.2 percent over the same period to 1,462,528, the ministry said. Despite the shift, households with dogs still slightly outnumber those with cats by 1.2 percent. However, while the number of households with multiple dogs has remained relatively stable, households keeping more than two cats have increased, contributing to the overall rise in the feline population. The trend
China on Wednesday teased in a video an aircraft carrier that could be its fourth, and the first using nuclear power, while making an allusion to Taiwan and vowing to further build up its islands, as it looks to boost maritime power, secure resources and bolster territorial claims. The video, issued on the eve of the 77th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, featured fictional officers with names that are homophones of three commissioned aircraft carriers, the Liaoning (遼寧), Shandong (山東) and Fujian (福建). Titled Into the Deep, it showed a 19-year-old named “Hejian” (何劍) joining the group, sparking
BIG YEAR: The company said it would also release its A12 chip the same year to keep a ‘reliable stream of new silicon technologies’ flowing to its customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its newest A13 chip is to enter volume production in 2029 as the chipmaker seeks to hold onto its tech leadership and demand for next-generation chips used in artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance-computing (HPC) and mobile applications. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, also unveiled its A12 chip at its annual technology symposium in Santa Clara, California. The A12 chip, which features TSMC’s super-power-rail technology to provide backside power delivery for AI and HPC applications, is also to enter volume production in 2029, a year after the scheduled release of the A14 chip. The technology moves
RSS