TAIWAN: Mayor of New Taipei Hou Yu-ih attended the official opening of the Ankeng light rail line on February 10. Celebrations included music, a plant market and the sale of sets of three bottles of commemorative beer representing the Ankeng, Danhai and Circular lines.
A free service is being operated by New Taipei Metro Corp between 10.00 and 18.00 until March 12, with revenue services running between 06.00 and midnight set to begin on March 13.
The line runs 7·5 km southwest from Shisizhang to Shuangcheng, with five elevated and four ground-level stations.
End-to-end services will run approximately every 15 min, with a shorter shuttle service providing a tram every 7½ min between Ankang and Shisizhang.
The end-to-end journey time is 21 min, shortening the travel time from the area to the city centre by up to 20 min. Future ridership is predicted at up to 53 000 passengers/day. A reward programme will provide regular users with a NT$50 rebate for every NT$200 spent on travel.
Construction has cost NT$166bn.
Taiwan Rolling Stock Co has supplied 15 LRVs. Thales supplied the signalling, telecoms, SCADA, passenger information, automatic vehicle location and priority management systems and the operational control centre.
