The scenic Old Mountain Line (舊山線) is scheduled to resume operations tomorrow, with the pilot run featuring a CK124-model steam train.
The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) suspended services on the line after the opening of New Mountain Line in 1998.
The 15.9km-long old railway line passes through several historic sites, including Shengsing Train Station (勝興車站) and the Broken Longteng Bridge (龍騰斷橋).
PHOTO: CNA
Shengsing Train Station was built in the Japanese colonial era, and the entire framework of the building was made of wood. It is also the highest station in the TRA system at 402m above sea level.
Longteng Bridge was damaged by an earthquake that shook the nation in 1935. The bridge was never repaired and is one of the most popular scenic spots in Miaoli.
The nation’s largest railway spent about NT$200 million (US$6.25 million) repairing the railway tracks and other facilities on the Old Mountain Line so that it was fit for use.
TRA director-general Frank Fan (范植谷) said that maintaining the Old Mountain Line had caused it to suffer financial losses up to NT$100 million.
“We want to have a trial operation [of the Old Mountain Line] for three months to test the reaction from the market,” Fan said.
“Then we will be able to evaluate the results and amend plans to outsource the operation to a private contractor,” he said.
The TRA is also proposing to outsource the operation under the renovate-operate-transfer (ROT) model. It estimates that the Old Mountain Line, once in service, could draw 750,000 tourists a year, which could generate a total revenue of NT$$300 million per year.
Aside from the Old Mountain Line, the TRA also has three branch lines, including the Pingxi Line (平溪線), Neiwan Line (內灣線) and the Jiji Line (集集線).
A survey of young Taiwanese showed that only 36.5 percent of men and 19.6 percent of women believe marriage is important, a trend that academics say is key to the nation’s low birthrate. Yang Wen-shan (楊文山), an adjunct research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, yesterday announced the 12th round of results from a longitudinal survey of attitudes among young Taiwanese toward markers of adulthood. While few of the respondents, who were aged 28 to 32 when surveyed in 2017, found marriage to be important, 95.8 percent believed that being responsible for oneself should take precedence, data showed. Economic independence came in
SHRINKING FEMALE POPULATION: Last year, 107.74 boys were born for every 100 girls in Taiwan, which is a greater gender imbalance than in Japan and South Korea The Ministry of the Interior recorded 9,601 births in January, the first time the nation has produced fewer than 10,000 newborns in a single month, while different indicators showed that Taiwan might also be facing a population with increasingly fewer births, women and marriages. It comes after the ministry reported a record low 165,249 births last year, which was lower than the 173,156 deaths recorded last year. The nation experienced negative population growth for the first time last year, ministry data found. The number of births in January also dropped from a year earlier, when there were 12,510 births. In February, there were
The Hualien District Prosecutors’ Office has listed six people as suspects in a judicial investigation into a fatal train crash on Friday last week. Fifty people were killed and more than 200 were injured when the Taroko Express No. 408 train slammed into a crane truck that had slid onto the tracks near the entrance of Cingshuei Tunnel (清水隧道) in Hualien’s Sioulin Township (秀林). The office also summoned six officials at the Taiwan Railways Administration’s (TRA) Hualien Engineering Section for questioning about alleged illegal business operations and unsafe work conditions by Yi Hsiang Industry Co and Tung Hsin Construction Co, the two
SUPPORTING DEMOCRACY IN ASIA: Twitter aims to ‘play a unique role in enabling the public conversation around important social movements,’ the US company said Twitter has thrown its support behind the “Milk Tea Alliance” of democracy movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia, defying China at a time when Beijing is punishing Western companies for commenting on what it considers internal matters. The social media company yesterday prominently displayed flags of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Myanmar and Thailand while unveiling an emoji to support democracy advocates in places that have in the past few years seen historic protests and share a love for the beverage. The emoji will automatically show up when users post the #MilkTeaAlliance hashtag, which was posted been 11 million times
RSS