Enjoying the scenery of the east coast and cultural performances, hundreds of people yesterday experienced a different way of traveling from Yilan’s Suao Township (蘇澳) to Hualien on a jet ferry, a service that Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) would like to make regular option.
Excited passengers aboard the Natchan Rera rushed to the windows when the ferry departed from the Port of Suao to take pictures or simply look at the view.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please look to your right, we are passing by the mouth of Liwu River (立霧溪), which is 55km long, and cuts through the mountains, and carved the mountains into the Taroko Gorge,” a crewmember said.
Landmark locations were announced through the PA system to passengers during the journey.
“This is my first time riding on the Natchan Rera. The trip is very enjoyable, and the boat is quite stable,” said a resident of Taoyuan County’s Dasi Township (大溪) surnamed Chen (陳), who was traveling with his wife and friends.
“Taiwan is surrounded by the ocean. I think it is a very good idea to have a ‘blue highway,’ and I hope ferry lines around the island could be established with vessels capable of carrying cars, so I can travel from Keelung to Hualien, Hualien to Greater Kaohsiung, and Greater Kaohsiung back to Keelung on boats, and drive my car around when the boat docks at different cities,” Chen said.
“It is also a very good alternative way to travel from Taipei to Hualien, especially because the Suhua Highway (蘇花公路) can be easily damaged when storms hit and closed for days,” he said, adding that he would recommend the ferry to friends.
The Natchan Rera can carry vehicles.
“The boat is capable of carrying 798 people, including the crew, 18 large buses and 193 small cars,” said Winnie Lin (林渭清), the Natchan Rera’s chief mate. “We are not carrying cars at the moment because the car ramps at Suao and Hualien harbors are not finished, but they should be completed soon.”
Although the trip received mostly positive feedback from passengers, Hsiao urged the government to help to make a ferry service more accessible and affordable.
“At the moment, you can only book a ticket through travel agencies, but to make it more accessible to the public, tickets should also be sold at the harbors, so that anyone who wants to take a boat ride could buy a ticket and get on board,” she said. “The government should also subsidize the tickets so that people — especially Hualien residents — could use the service on a regular basis.”
An economy-class ticket from Suao to Hualien is NT$700 (US$23.5), while a business-class ticket is NT$1,000 and first class costs NT$1,500.
“It could cost tens of billions of NT dollars to build a highway, not including the costs for maintenance, but it costs much less — about NT$200 million to NT$300 million a year — to subsidize ferry tickets,” Hsiao said.
She said she would push legislation to turn the “blue highway” into a regular means of transportation.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS