The rebuilt Nanfangao Bridge in Yilan County’s Suao Township (蘇澳) opened to traffic yesterday, with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) telling a ceremony that she hopes the new bridge creates opportunities to revive the fishing town.
The original bridge collapsed on Oct. 1, 2019, killing six workers from the Philippines and Indonesia who were on fishing vessels that were crushed by the falling structure.
Nine other Philippine and Indonesian workers, one person who was driving a tanker truck on the bridge when it collapsed and three rescue personnel were injured in the incident.
Photo: Chiang Chih-hsiung, Taipei Times
Tsai said the bridge’s collapse caused significant casualties and had a major impact on the local economy, tourism and traffic.
She thanked Premier Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) Cabinet for its contributions to efforts to rebuild the bridge.
The project faced numerous challenges, including dismantling the old bridge and designing the new one, as well as building the structure during the COVID-19 pandemic, which hampered progress, Tsai said.
Construction of the 796.53m Nanfangao Bridge began on July 16, 2020. It cost NT$860 million (US$28 million at the current exchange rate).
The bridge’s opening had to be pushed back by three months from Sept. 18 after a problem occurred on May 27 involving the pouring of concrete, Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) said on July 11.
Tsai said the bridge is expected to boost the local economy and tourism while improving traffic flow at the Nanfangao Fishing Port (南方澳漁港).
She also said the bridge’s unique mackerel shape would make it an important landmark that signals to fishers that they have arrived home when they return to Nanfangao.
Su said the government has conducted safety checks on 26,000 bridges across Taiwan, with 101 determined to be in need of repair or reinforcement.
So far, 100 of the bridges have been repaired or reinforced, with the work on the last one scheduled to be completed in April next year, he said.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
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
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
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
RSS