The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday gave a conditional pass to the environmental impact review for an electrification project for the railway line between Hualien and Taitung.
As the 155.5km railway line has yet to be electrified, express trains from Taipei to Taitung must change locomotives for diesel-powered trains in Hualien.
The environmental impact review committee required that the Railway Reconstruction Bureau ensure proper handling and relocation of earth removed as a result of the project. The committee also required the developer to ascertain the safe distance between tunnels and river beds.
The project was one of the alternatives proposed by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) if the construction of the Suhua Freeway was halted.
Huang Joung-chieh (黃中杰), a project director at the Railway Reconstruction Bureau , said that the project did not face serious opposition from the committee.
However, Huang denied that the project had any connection to the construction of the Suhua Freeway.
"The project has been under review since 2004," he said. "The freeway and the railway are two separate matters."
Huang said the project would cost about NT$14 billion (US$424 million). Construction is expected to take seven years to complete.
Based on the bureau's study, the electrification project will boost the operating speed of the trains on the Hualien and Taitung line from 110kph to 130kph and reduce travel time to about one-and-a-half hours.
The Hualien-Taitung railway electrification project was also discussed at the legislature's Transportation Committee yesterday morning.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Justin Huang (
Huang said yesterday that the construction should start soon as the project had passed its environmental impact review.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS