The National Development Council (NDC) on Monday approved a project to build a Siaogang-Linyuan line on the Kaohisung Mass Rapid Transit (KMRT) system and said services on the line would be scheduled to begin in 2030.
The NDC, the nation’s top economic planning agency, said construction of the new line is scheduled to start at the end of next year, pending final approval from the Executive Yuan.
The total cost of the project is expected to be NT$53.3 billion (US$1.91 billion), it said.
The 12km line is to have seven stations linking the terminal of the Red Line to Linyuan Industrial Park (林園工業區).
In addition to Linyuan Industrial Park, the new line would also have stations at two more important industrial parks in Kaohsiung: the planned New Material Circular Industrial Park (新材料循環產業園區) and the Linhai Industrial Park (臨海工業區).
Kaohsiung Deputy Mayor Charles Lin (林欽榮) said the Siaogang-Linyuan line would run along a section of road which has had a relatively high number of accidents with injuries and deaths.
Motorists face risks when they drive on roads to and from industrial parks because they are often flanked by heavy trucks.
In the past 10 years, the number of traffic accidents on that section of road has resulted in 27 deaths and about 4,000 injuries per year on average, with the costs resulting from the collisions reaching about NT$5 billion per year, Lin said citing statistics compiled by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
After the completion of the new line, commuters would no longer have to drive their scooters when traveling to the three industrial parks because they would be able to take the KMRT, which would be much safer, he said.
The three industrial parks, which house an important semiconductor cluster and have a combined workforce of about 60,000, generate NT$1.24 trillion in total production value each year, he added.
To encourage people to take the Siaogang-Linyuan line, the Kaohsiung City Government is mulling the possibility of issuing special tickets at preferential rates, Lin said.
The Kaohsiung City Council is expected to approve rules for the city government to issue subsidies on ticket prices two years before the line is completed, he said.
The Kaohsiung MRT currently has two lines: the south-north Red Line between Gangshan South and Siaogang stations, and the east-west Orange Line between Hamasen and Daliao stations.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching