Heavy traffic was yesterday reported on freeways across Taiwan, as people returned to their hometowns or flocked to major tourist hot spots at the start of the three-day weekend.
Yilan County police reported traffic jams on a recently improved section of the Suhua Highway, with heavy traffic observed as early as 5:30am and peak congestion at 8am.
The Freeway Bureau reported a traffic volume of 18.1 million vehicle-kilometers on Taiwan’s freeways, following an earlier prediction of 115 million vehicle-kilometers for the whole long weekend, or about 1.3 times that of average normal weekday traffic.
Photo: CNA
Vehicle-kilometers measure traffic flow by multiplying the number of vehicles on a traffic network by the average length of their trips.
Several protocols were put in place to respond to the anticipated traffic spikes and jams.
As part of the protocols, a high-occupancy policy was from 6am until noon imposed on vehicles entering the Chiang Wei-shui Memorial Freeway’s (Freeway No. 5) southbound interchange in Taipei’s Nangang District (南港), where only vehicles with more than three occupants were allowed to enter the freeway.
From midnight until noon, access ramps on the Pingjhen system interchange in Taoyuan and the Puyan system interchange in Changhua on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1) were shut down to regulate traffic.
Other measures include charging NT$0.9 per kilometer traveled, while the usual daily toll-free distance of 20km has been suspended, as well as waiving freeway fees daily from midnight to 5am during the long weekend.
The bureau said that commuters and carpoolers could use provincial highways as alternatives to avoid traffic congestion on the freeways.
Monday’s national holiday commemorates the victims of the 228 Massacre, in which tens of thousands of civilians were killed following a crackdown by government forces on demonstrators and local elites after a confrontation between officials and Taipei residents on Feb. 27, 1947.
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