Taiwan Transportation Safety Board Chairman Young Hong-tsu (楊宏智) yesterday said that he supports the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ plan to corporatize the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA).
Young made the statement at a news conference in Taipei, at which the board published the results of its investigation into the derailment of a train in Hualien County on April 2 last year.
The southbound Taroko Express No. 408 crashed inside the Cingshuei Tunnel (清水隧道) in Sioulin Township (秀林) after hitting a crane truck that had slid onto the tracks from a service road, derailing it.
Photo: CNA
Forty-nine people were killed and 213 were injured.
After a year of investigation, the board identified 47 direct, indirect or root causes of the nation’s deadliest railway incident.
“The main cause of the crash was that the agency did not have complete rules to manage construction sites along railway tracks, nor did it have the ability to enforce the existing rules,” Rail Occurrence Investigation Division convener Li Gang (李綱) said. “The agency needs to have a comprehensive set of rules to manage these sites and cannot just pass the buck to contractors whenever an accident happens.”
Representatives of Tears of Taroko, a group formed by relatives of people killed in the crash, spoke at the news conference.
They said they doubted that the TRA would take the board’s safety recommendations seriously.
The government should set up a task force to ensure that the TRA implements all of the board’s safety recommendations, they said.
Young said that he stands with the families of those who died.
“The TRA has many problems, and we all hope that it can quickly live up to our expectations,” he said. “My family and I use the TRA’s services. The last thing I want is for the report to remain merely words on paper.”
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications, which supervises the TRA, should ensure that the agency operates safely, Young said.
“The board does not have the authority to say anything about the ministry’s plan to transform the TRA into a state-run corporation, but I am not against the plan,” he said. “The plan might not immediately fix all of the problems the railway agency faces, but there is always hope when there is a change.”
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