The Cabinet on Friday gave the green light for the Taoyuan Metro Brown Line project, which aims to connect northern Taoyuan with New Taipei City and Taipei, to commence.
In a Facebook post on Friday, Vice Premier Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) announced that Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) had approved the feasibility study and comprehensive planning report for the project.
The line is to connect Taiwan Railway Corp’s Taoyuan Station with Taipei Metro’s Huilong Station.
Photo courtesy of the Taoyuan City Government
Cheng added that the project is to connect to Taipei’s Zhonghe-Xinlu Line, as well as two under-construction routes — Taipei’s Wanda-Zhonghe-Shulin Line and the Taoyuan Green Line.
When the project was first passed by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in December last year, the Taoyuan Department of Rapid Transit Systems announced that it aims to complete construction of the line within eight years of Cabinet approval.
On Facebook, Cheng said he has wanted to see the project green-lit for nine years, from back when he was Taoyuan mayor.
Cheng added that the project budget was NT$45.65 billion (US$1.44 billion).
Cheng said NT$8.12 billion of the budget would go to upgrading light rail hardware so it can handle a high volume of passengers, and NT$11.18 billion would be spent on constructing the line underground.
The central government is to shoulder NT$23.84 billion of the cost and local governments are to pay NT$21.81 billion.
In related news, the ministry on Friday also approved the extension of New Taipei City’s Sanying Line.
The main route of the metropolitan railway line is currently under construction, and the extension is to add three stops to link New Taipei City with Taoyuan.
New Taipei City’s Department of Rapid Transit Systems said the three stops on the 4km line would connect New Taipei’s Sanying Line with the Taoyuan Green Line.
Department Director Lee Cheng-an (李政安) said the project is to be forwarded to the Cabinet for further approval.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching