The demolition of the Heping-Xinsheng Bridge is to start today and continue until Saturday next week, after it was decided that the bridge does not have cultural heritage value, the Taipei City Government said.
Protesters gathered at the scene after the government announced the decision this morning.
Dozens of police were deployed as the New Construction Office of the Taipei Public Works Department blocked the road and entrances to the bridge.
Photo: Liao Chen-hui, Taipei Times
Art critic Wu Mu-ching (吳牧青), who has lived nearby for 40 years, tried to enter the blocked area and was brought away by the police.
The bridge is an important landmark that symbolizes the city’s collective memory in the 1980s and is seen in numerous films and television shows, Wu said.
The authorities blamed the bridge for a poorly designed traffic route, he added.
He called the government’s action a “raid,” which he described as tantamount to the Chinese Communist Party’s way of doing things.
Protest group Safeguard Heping-Xinsheng Bridge filed an application to review its cultural heritage value in a bid to prevent the bridge from immediate demolition.
Six members of the Cultural Heritage Review Committee were gathered to review the cultural heritage value of the bridge and a site visit was conducted on Wednesday last week after receiving the application on Nov. 5, the Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs said in a news release.
Six committee members were briefed by the applicants, members of the public and relevant authorities on the reason for application, the current state of the building, the structure of the bridge, the demolition plan and complementary measures to determine whether the bridge is of potential cultural heritage value as a monument, historic building, commemorative building, historic site or cultural landscape, it said.
After considering opinions from all sides and having conducted a site visit, the committee members unanimously agreed that the bridge is below the standard to be designated as cultural heritage under the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法), it said.
Traffic control is to be in place from 11pm to 6am every day when the demolition is underway, the New Construction Office said in a news release.
Only buses are to be allowed through, while other vehicles are to be directed to use Wenzhou Street and Jianguo S Road during the traffic control period, the government said.
The 42-year-old overpass serves as an elevated walkway over the intersection of Heping and Xinsheng roads.
Located about 500m from National Taiwan Normal University at the southwest corner of Daan Forest Park, the overpass allowed people to walk over the busy multiple-lane intersection for more than four decades.
Despite many residents’ fondness for the functional — if not classically attractive — pedestrian footbridge, the city government last month announced its plan to demolish it.
Additional reporting by CNA
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported
RSS