Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/18
By: Huang Li-yun and Kay Liu
Taipei Metro marked its 20th anniversary in March. Its network now
A testing accident in 1993.
encompasses five lines spanning 131.1 kilometers after starting with a single line of 10.5 km.
The attempt to simultaneously build the complete network starting in 1986 led to a decade of severe traffic congestion, which was one of the issues during the 1994 Taipei mayoral campaign. Accidents during testing of the first metro line a year earlier were also debated.
The country’s first metro system has faced some bumps in the road over the past two decades. One of them was caused by Typhoon Nari in 2001, when 16 underground stations were flooded, including a main control center in Taipei Main Station.
It took three months for Taipei Metro to resume full operations, and flood prevention measures were introduced in existing and new stations. [FULL STORY]
