Starting yesterday, motorists who have unpaid freeway tolls of less than NT$30,000 and have received a notice from the Administrative Enforcement Agency can pay them at convenience stores, the Freeway Bureau said on Tuesday.
When drivers fail to pay freeway tolls after being notified by the bureau and fined, their cases are handed over to the Ministry of Justice’s Administrative Enforcement Agency, the bureau said.
Ninety-eight percent of the agency’s cases involve less than NT$20,000 in unpaid tolls, the bureau said.
Photo: Cheng Wei-chi, Taipei Times
About 6,500 drivers with less than NT$20,000 in tolls have paid at convenience stores since 2019, when it was first allowed, the bureau said.
Starting yesterday, the amount was raised to NT$30,000, with drivers able to pay at 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, Hi-Life, OK Mart and Simple Mart stores.
People with unpaid tolls of more than NT$30,000 must still pay at a bureau or agency office, it said, adding that a post office money order or a bank wire can also be used.
HOLIDAY WEEKEND
In other news, during the Mid-Autumn Festival long weekend, freeways are to be toll-free from 12am to 5am on Sept. 18 to Sept. 20, as well as from 12am to 10am on Sept. 21, the bureau said.
Freeways are expected to be congested during the holiday, as it is a four-day weekend and the nation’s COVID-19 alert was downgraded, it said.
Measures would be implemented to regulate the traffic on freeways, it added.
During the holiday, drivers should expect congestion at freeway interchanges in northern and central Taiwan, as well as on the Chiang Wei-shui Memorial Freeway (Freeway No. 5), as traffic volume is likely to be nearly double that of typical weekday traffic, the bureau said.
Regulatory measures are subject to change, depending on the COVID-19 situation, it added.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS