The Taipei City Government will revise river dredging plans, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday.
“Even though funding might be the same, dredging plans will change to focus on allowing boats to enter and exit docks,” Ko said, adding that previous dredging of the river channel had not had any effect.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) yesterday reported that the city government had spent NT$250 million (US$8.09 million) over the past 10 years on river dredging as part of plans to promote tourism through boat rides on the Tamsui River (淡水河), which courses through the Taipei Basin.
More than 80,000 people took the river tours last year, according to Department of Transportation figures.
Chen Juin-hong (陳俊宏), section head of the department’s general transportation section, said that even the river tour line’s small boats have to carefully coordinate departure times with tides to avoid being stranded.
He denied a media report that more than 60 percent of river line passengers were schoolchildren on field trips, saying that while the city government covers the tickets of schoolchildren, they make up only 6 percent of passengers.
He added that while the business of the private line operators licensed by the city was “poor,” the city government did not require them to report profit figures.
Chen said the city government has already approved a new river tour route along the city’s Keelung River (基隆河) between the Xikou (錫口) and Guandu (關渡) docks. Operation is scheduled to begin by the end of the year pending city approval of the boat being constructed by the line’s operator, he said.
Hydraulic Engineering Office Director Chen Shyh-haw (陳世浩) said his office had not attempted to make the Tamsui River passable at all times due to the prohibitive cost that would entail and that he would review dredging operations following Ko’s directive.
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