This month the government floated plans to extend the High Speed Rail (HSR) network around the entire island. Transportation Minister Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) said that this dream will be built piece by piece, due to its high construction costs.
At present plans are being formulated for an extension to Yilan, with the new HSR station slated for a site 350 meters south of the Yilan county government complex. The government has promised to put in a new train station there as well.
That project is paralleled by a proposal to spend billions to put in an express rail line to
Taipei, April 8 (CNA) The Hsuehshan Tunnel that connects New Taipei City and Yilan County was temporarily closed Friday morning after a car caught on fire for unknown reasons in the tunnel at 8:34 a.m., according to freeway police.
DEFENSE
<strong>Ministry silent about command post</strong>
The Ministry of National Defense yesterday neither confirmed nor denied a media report that it is cooperating with the Freeway Bureau and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to establish a command center at the Hsuehshan Tunnel’s (雪山隧道) control center in New Taipei City’s Pinglin (坪林) area. The new command center would be able to assume operations from the Hengshan Command Center in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直) area in the event of armed conflict, the media report said. The defense ministry only said that it moves assets based on analysis of enemy threats and defense needs. Meanwhile,
The Freeway Bureau yesterday disclosed the license plate numbers of the top 10 drivers who had driven below the minimum speed limit of the Hsuehshan Tunnel on the Chiang Wei-shui Freeway (Freeway No. 5) more than a dozen times between January and September.
The minimum speed limit inside the Hsuehshan Tunnel is 70kph. To curb slow driving, the bureau has installed a warning system to detect northbound vehicles driving below 65kph and maintaining a following distance of greater than 100m.
Approximately 7.58 million vehicles drove through the northbound lanes of the Hsuehshan Tunnel from January to September, of which 75,000 were warned