Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) yesterday said that the city should not be asked to bear the potential financial losses that it would sustain when the Keelung MRT system is in operation, adding that the burden should be mainly borne by the central government and New Taipei City.
Hsieh made the statement after the Executive Yuan on Wednesday approved phase 1 of the Keelung MRT project, which would be built from Taiwan Railway Corp’s Badu (八堵) Station in Keelung to its Nangang (南港) Station in Taipei.
Construction of the route — which is to pass through New Taipei City — is estimated to top NT$69.689 billion (US$2.223 billion), of which NT$51.998 billion is to be paid by the central government.
Photo: Lu Hsiu-hsien, Taipei Times
The remaining funds are to be jointly paid by the three cities — NT$5.754 billion by the Taipei City Government, NT$7.144 billion by the New Taipei City Government and NT$4.792 billion by the Keelung City Government.
Meanwhile, the central government would also subsidize NT$8.507 billion to construct the Badu-Nangang MRT route.
Hsieh told reporters that he personally called Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) yesterday to thank the ministry for supporting the construction of the metropolitan railway line.
He said he also told Wang that the Railway Bureau needs to provide a more detailed design of the public transport system around Badu Station or commuters could not swiftly and smoothly access other public transport services once they exit the station.
Wang promised to relay such information to the bureau, Hsieh said.
However, Hsieh said that he does not think that the Keelung City Government should be solely responsible for addressing financial losses the city would sustain once the MRT system is in operation.
“We have limited financial capacity and can barely breathe with the construction funds we have to pay. When it comes to the operation of the MRT system, we hope that the central government and our brothers in New Taipei City can shoulder a bit more of the burden,” he said.
Hsieh said that the city government had secured NT$20 million to conduct research on the feasibility of phase 2 of the project.
“Based on my understanding of Keelung, I would hope that the route would pass through the city’s Anle District (安樂) before returning to the downtown area, but we will pass that judgement to a consulting firm doing feasibility research,” he said.
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:
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