Almost 16,000 train passengers were delayed yesterday morning due to a power outage in the railway section between Yingge (鶯歌) and Neili (內壢).
The incident rendered the section powerless for nearly three hours, forcing hundreds of thousands of commuters in Keelung and Taoyuan to take intercity buses to Taipei instead. This marked the third incident in four days in which passengers were delayed because of damaged facilities.
According to the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA), the incident occurred at 6:31am at the northern end of the Taoyuan Railway Station when the power was cut off due to broken power lines.
Photo: Chiu Yi-tung, Taipei Times
The agency managed to resume two-way operations on a single track by 9:29am. However, it shut down the electricity at 10:35am again for 30 minutes due to the need for maintenance on other damaged facilities.
While it was trying to fix the broken cables, it also activated its emergency response plan by quickly arranging buses to transport train passengers to Taipei.
The full operation was not resumed until 12:04pm. Because of the power outage, about 15,900 passengers on 41 trains were delayed.
Among them, 14 express trains were delayed for more than 45 minutes, and passengers on those trains are entitled to a full refund.
Many commuters were frustrated about the delays and the TRA’s response to the situation.
A netizen named Lin Ting-kuo (林定國) complained that the TRA was too slow in repairing the damage.
“Everybody has to go to work or school on Monday, and it claimed that the electricity cables were broken because they were hit by lightening. It’s a lie indeed,” Lin said.
The TRA said it had hired experts from Japan to examine problems with the power supply system following a series of incidents involving the electric cables. It added that about NT$1.1 billion (US$35.1 million) has been budgeted to upgrade all the power lines from thinner to thicker ones, which would make it more difficult for the cables to be torn apart by objects from outside the train system or to melt down because of surges in the electrical current.
It said that the power lines went down at 8:10pm on Sunday night, but the crew did not identify the reason for the power outage.
It also said that some of the twisted pairs might have melted down because of the thunderstorms yesterday morning, which eventually caused the cables to snap after being hit by the lightening.
The cause of the incident is to be investigated by the TRA’s operation safety committee.
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