Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) yesterday asked the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) to make preparations for big events, after the hallway connecting the Taipei Dome to the MRT station nearby was swarmed by crowds after a baseball game.
The first match of the CPBL Taiwan Series, played by the CTBC Brothers against the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions, was held at the Taipei Dome on Saturday. The venue was packed with 40,000 spectators, marking a record box office for a single match of the series.
However, Taipei City Councilor Lee Ming-hsien (李明賢) wrote on Facebook that he received complaints about the jostling crowd stuck at the underground passage of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall MRT Station connecting it to the Taipei Dome.
Photo: Screen grab from Taipei City Councilor Lee Ming-hsien’s Facebook page
“The escalator was not turned off or under control, while the crowd thronged downward to the station. It was very dangerous. Fortunately, no accidents occurred,” he said.
Lee said he had immediately requested the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and the TRTC to improve the traffic flow around the station for the match held at the Taipei Dome yesterday.
The record box office of the Taiwan Series on Saturday is a matter of pride not only for Taipei, but for all of Taiwan, Chiang said yesterday.
Regarding the crowd, Chiang said he had requested that TRTC review the problem.
Although a temporary command center was established to guide and control the crowd, preparations should be made for big events, including escalator controls, he said.
About 19,000 people entered the station from 8pm to 10pm after the match ended, TRTC said.
TRTC said it added five supplementary trains with the headway reduced to 2.5 minutes to 3 minutes and that the crowds melted away about 41 minutes after they went into the station.
A command center had 39 personnel to help and monitor the situation and the number of passers-by at the station via closed-circuit television cameras, it said.
Traffic-guiding personnel, who were posted at the entrance and exit of the downward escalator near Exit 5 of the MRT station, were controlling the number of passengers moving down from the entrance and guiding them forward, it said.
The escalator was turned off to ensure safety when the crowd reached a peak at 9:09pm, it added.
TRTC said it would continue to enhance the management of the passage and turn off the escalator ahead of peak times in the future. It also urged people to enter the station via Exit 4, where the passage is 12m wide, instead of Exit 5.
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