Probably nothing, it’s just a bus lane basically, one route up and down that was covered by lots of buses anyway.
The overhead lane was only really started last year from my recollection, try went mad building all the pillars but its going to be years before its finished.
There is another project to raise all the rail lines which is also beneficial but that was a national project anyway but somehow got incorporated into Jason Hus MRT.
It must suck for him that he won’t be mayor when they open the Opera house …maybe they will speed up the opening.
Yes the BRT is affected by traffic lights in the same way as the cars are. It operates on zhonggang lu and is sandwiched between the motorcycle lane and the main car lane. This means that you have to cross a VERY busy road each time you want to hop on and off. Also for drivers, turning off zhonggang lu has the added danger of getting hit by a speeding BRT… which has happened a few times now.
That being said, it’s faster to travel by BRT from Providence Uni to the main train station than it is to drive and I see plenty of people using it (even after the free trial period).
As for the MRT… there has been a lot of progress made over the last year in terms of the overhead infrastructure being put up. There is talk of rolling stock being tested in a few years time.
Investigators discovered that a female MOTC section chief at the bureau’s central Taiwan office refused to go along with the scheme, insisting on detailed scrutiny of the project and the imposition of the fines against the company.
Hua Sheng executives colluded with a Taichung police officer and other ministry officials to follow the section chief and secretly film her going about her daily activities in an attempt to gain information that they could use to blackmail her, investigators said.
As they did not discover any impropriety, Hua Sheng paid an organized crime group to kidnap her in July last year, and she was stripped naked and photographed, in a bid to blackmail her into co-operating with the company and alter completion dates of the project to avoid paying the fine.
Prosecutors have charged Su Hsiao-chen (蘇曉貞), special assistant to the president at Hua Sheng, police officer Kuo Chih-feng (郭志峰), and a contractor surnamed Lu (盧) with kidnapping, blackmail and related offenses.
Su allegedly seduced male officials at the bureau to persuade them to take part in the scheme.
I have to wait for the proposed Blue Line before I’ll have one near me. I should be retirement age by then, so that’ll be nice…if the plan doesn’t change, that is.
Teething problems. Remember how many problems the Muzha line had? Tires that were “new” but five years old that blew up? And worst the support pillars were not strong enough and had to be encased in steel! Massive delays.
But it was an exciting time being first to ride the first MRT in Taiwans history !!
I went through a lot of firsts in Taiwan.
First MRT in Taiwan
First HSR in Taiwan
First electric train in Taiwan
First freeway section in Taiwan (TAipei to Taoyuan on Freeway 1)