Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said yesterday that the ministry would complete plans for a new route for the Suhua Highway (Provincial Highway No. 9, 蘇花公路) by the beginning of next year.
Mao was confident the plans for the stretch of highway between Ilan County’s Suao (蘇澳) and Hualien County’s Chungde (崇德) would pass an environmental impact review by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) with few complications.
He said he hoped construction to replace the section between Suao and Hualien County’s Hoping (和平), which he said was in the worst condition, would begin by the end of next year.
Mao said the ministry’s design was meant to improve conditions on the Suhua Highway and not to turn the highway into a freeway or an expressway, as critics have claimed.
The proposed route does not entirely follow the same route as the contentious Suhua Freeway (蘇花高速公路) would.
Rather than entrusting the project to the National Expressway Engineering Bureau, which is in charge of construction on all freeways and expressways, the ministry would turn the plans over to the Directorate-General of Highways, Mao said.
Mao made the remarks at the legislature yesterday, where he briefed the Transportation Committee about the ministry’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year.
The Suhua Highway is the only highway connecting the north with the east coast.
Statistics from the highways agency indicate that traffic flow on the Suhua Highway was disrupted because of various problems for at least 144 days between 1994 and 2006.
On average, the Suao-Hoping section is either closed or reduced to one lane — that must accommodate traffic in both directions — for 50 days each year.
The National Police Agency said that 10,495 traffic accidents had occurred on the Suhua Highway, killing 1,046 people.
More than 13,000 have been injured in accidents on the highway, it said.
The death rate was about 15 times higher than any freeway on the west coast.
Mao said in July that the government must respond to the requests of east coast residents who are dissatisfied with the highway.
It is the government’s duty to provide “a safe route home,” he said at the time.
Environmentalists, however, fear the ministry’s proposal is little more than a new name for the Suhua Freeway.
In April, the EPA rejected plans to construct the Suhua Freeway — a project that had been the focus of debate for a decade — at the recommendation of an Environmental Impact Assessment Committee.
The committee said the proposal should be shelved and that the transportation ministry should first make improvements to Provincial Highway No. 9 and increase the frequency of trains to Hualien.
Meanwhile, legislators questioned Mao yesterday over whether he would be able to achieve campaign promises made by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) concerning transportation projects.
Mao said the ministry would definitely carry out projects promised by Ma, but that the timeline for realizing Ma’s promises would be variable and depend on the budget allocated to the ministry.
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