Taipei City's MRT Muzha-Neihu Line experienced its third system breakdown yesterday, with transportation being halted for about two hours in the afternoon because of a circuit malfunction at Zhongxiao Fuxing Station.
Taipei City Secretariat deputy director Tan Gwa-guang (譚國光), director of the Neihu-Muzha Line emergency response team, said lightning struck the circuit board at 2:19pm, preventing communication between the operations center and the trains.
Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) suspended the line's operation immediately and staff manually drove three of 22 trains stuck between stations to the nearest platforms, Tan said.
The 340 passengers in the three trains were evacuated by 2:57pm. Service was resumed at 4:10pm after the system was fixed and a trial run.
It was the third system breakdown since the Neihu stretch of the line began operations on July 4. The line experienced its first shutdown on July 10 after a power outage in the afternoon and service did not resume until the following day.
The second system breakdown occurred on Thursday last week. Service was suspended for more than four hours because of a network system malfunction.
Tan said the TRTC would give the broken circuit board to the system builder, Bombardier, for further analysis, adding that the Taipei City Government would ask the contractor to strengthen the system's resistance to lightning strikes.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors lashed out at Tan and the TRTC for refusing to allow the press to join their inspection of the Neihu Depot and operations center.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Lee Chien-chang (李建昌) and eight other councilors were at the depot and operations center to check on the cause behind the frequent system breakdowns. However, the TRTC refused to let reporters in, saying the areas were restricted.
“The TRTC is apparently afraid of a public inspection of the system, and the city government is unable to face the problem. Trying to cover up the truth will only make things worse,” Lee said.
The councilors and the media were kept outside of the depot for about 20 minutes before Tan showed up and insisted that reporters could not enter the restricted areas.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) challenged the city government and the TRTC for allowing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City councilors and a CTi-TV Station staffer to enter the depot and operations center earlier this month.
Tan said he had only learned that a CTi reporter had entered the depot yesterday morning and would look into who was responsible for letting the reporter in.
Lee said the caucus would initiate a signature drive to hold a provisional session at the Taipei City Council and demand Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) report to the council on the Muzha-Neihu Line and two other problematic municipal projects — the Maokong Gondola system and the Xinsheng Overpass.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS