About 200 residents of New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水) yesterday morning marched near the Hongshulin MRT station, calling on the central government to build a proposed expressway connecting Tamsui and neighboring Guandu District (關渡) in Taipei to ease the traffic congestion that has plagued the area for years.
Wearing white T-shirts, protesters shouted “Give us the Tambei (淡北) expressway” and “We do not want traffic congestion” as they marched.
Tamsui District Administrator Wu Tsung-ren (巫宗仁), New Taipei City Councilor Cheng Tai Li-hsiang (鄭戴麗香), representatives of New Taipei City councilors Tsai Ching-hsien (蔡錦賢) and Tsai Yeh-wei (蔡葉偉) and 20 borough wardens joined the march.
Photo: Lai Hsiao-tung, Taipei Times
Many drivers honked their horns in support of the marchers as they drove past the protesters.
Chang Lien-rong (張連榮), who created a Facebook page for supporters of the proposed Tambei expressway project, said Highway No. 2 is the only road that Tamsui residents can use to commute to Taipei, even though the population in Tamsui has soared from about 100,000 people 20 years ago to about 200,000.
“Highway No. 2 is still the only highway we have after 20 years. People in Tamsui have to put up with traffic jams every day and even ambulances get stuck in traffic. We need another road to ease the traffic on Highway No. 2. The new roadway should at least be able to divert 50 percent of traffic from Highway No. 2,” he said.
The proposed site for the expressway would be about 30m from the Mangrove Forest Conservation Area and construction would not affect the forest’s ecosystem, Chang said.
Tamsui residents believe that protecting the ecosystem is just as important as building new transport systems, Cheng said.
A larger protest could be launched if the current appeal is ignored, he said.
Wu said the proposed expressway is vital as Tamsui’s population continues to rise despite the inadequacy of road access.
“Protecting the mangroves and their natural habitat was the main issue when the highway project was deliberated at the second stage of an environmental assessment review [in 2015]. However, no one took into consideration how the project might affect the ecosystem of humans,” Wu said.
“Carbon emissions will rise if traffic jams become more frequent, and such jams are time-consuming,” Wu said. “We hope the central government, the Taipei City Government and members of the environmental assessment committee would try to strike a balance between the environment and construction of the infrastructure and finish the expressway’s construction as soon as possible.”
The Environmental Protection Administration’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) committee conditionally approved the 4.7km expressway project in 2011, but in 2013 the Taipei High Administrative Court rejected the review on the grounds that the committee did not thoroughly assess the effect of the construction on the mangrove forest preservation area.
The EPA held additional reviews in January, September and November of 2015 after the expressway plan was extended to 5.4km.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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