Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (
Hau gave assurances after presiding over a city administrative meeting. He said the lightning, triggered by a thunderstorm, destroyed two control circuit boards, leading to a breakdown of the tourism-oriented skyrail system, which only began operation six days ago.
The transportation system, which connects the Taipei City Zoo and Muzha's Maokong tea-growing district tourist attractions, broke down at 1:45pm and did not resume operations until 7pm, according to the gondola's operator, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC).
PHOTO: CNA
It took TRTC engineers more than five hours to repair the system.
The gondola for the first time activated its "rescue mode" soon after it was struck by lightning and transported passengers to a nearby station using back-up power. As a result, no passengers were trapped during the incident, TRTC officials said.
Deputy Mayor Lin Chung-yi (林崇一) said that the cable car system stops running as soon as it detects lighting. Moreover, he said, the system is equipped with a lightning prediction device, which is able to detect lightning 5km from the system.
Lin also explained that while the system's lightning conductor is designed to guide electricity from lightning to the ground, the lightning strike was too strong and burned out the circuit boards as it passed through the cable car's electronic systems.
The skyrail's builder, the French company POMA, has been informed of the failure and asked to improve the lightning avoidance system to reduce the risk of future mechanical failures, Lin added.
As for complaints by visitors about illegal street vendors and excessively high food and beverage prices, Lin said a task force of officials responsible for health, environmental protection and law enforcement affairs has been organized to crack down on the unfairness and offenses.
The law will be strictly enforced to ensure fair markets and environmental protection in tourist locations, Lin said.
Also see story:
Managing a project is as crucial as building
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