Asked about the safety of installing artificial turf on concrete for the Taipei Dome’s baseball field, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) yesterday said that the material and installation methods meet international standards.
Chiang had promised that his administration would complete the long-stalled Taipei Dome construction project within a year of him becoming mayor.
New Taipei City Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) on Sunday posted six photographs on Facebook of workers placing artificial turf on the venue’s baseball field.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
On March 24, Lee also posted photos on Facebook of a hot smoke test for smoke control systems on the baseball field, which he said went smoothly.
The smoke accumulated according to plan, and the fire sprinkler system was in good condition, so the goal of playing ball in the Taipei Dome by the end of the year is getting closer, he wrote.
However, the photos of the artificial turf led to many concerns, with people leaving comments that said the artificial turf did not seem thick enough, and installing it on hard concrete might be unsafe for baseball players.
Chiang was asked by reporters about the turf at an inspection of the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit System’s Hsinyi Line (信義線) east-extension construction site.
Professional Japanese technicians had been invited to instruct workers and supervise the installation of the artificial turf, he said.
The quality and installation methods follow international standards, Chiang said.
The turf installation method at the Taipei Dome is the same as was used at Japan’s Vantelin Dome Nagoya and Kyocera Dome Osaka, and Japanese technicians are overseeing the installation, Lee wrote on Facebook on Sunday.
The artificial turf would be installed directly on the concrete floor, and fine sand and granulated crumb rubber would be used as infill, he wrote.
The material has been used for many years, and its durability, stability, shock absorption, bounce and other qualities meet the requirements of international baseball games, he wrote.
The Taipei Dome construction project began in 2012, but it was suspended in 2015 by the city government, which cited public safety issues. Construction resumed in 2020.
The city government hopes to complete construction by the end of this month, Lee said.
The government would apply for user licensing next month, and hopefully obtain the license by July, to open the venue to the public by the end of the year, Lee said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
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
RSS