High-speed rail traffic abnormalities have occurred 10 times from January to February this year. Li Kunze, a legislator, said that in addition to causing train delays, the abnormal traffic incidents have made people worry about travel safety.

(File photo, photo by reporter Zheng Weiqi)

[Reporter Zheng Weiqi/Taipei Report] The number of passengers on Taiwan’s high-speed rail has increased rapidly. Legislator Li Kunze said in an inquiry by the Legislative Yuan’s Transportation Committee that since Taiwan’s high-speed rail was opened to traffic in 2007, there have been as many as 38 abnormalities in the switch in 2014, and the number has been increasing year by year in the past three years. In January and February this year, there were as many as 10 incidents. In addition to causing train delays, it also made people worry about train safety.

Before the epidemic (2019), Taiwan’s high-speed rail had an average of 184,000 daily riders, and in January this year, the average daily ridership reached 196,000, and the number of riders is increasing.

Li Kunze said that the speed of high-speed rail is as high as 300 kilometers per hour, and safety is the most important thing. However, there have been more and more traffic accidents recently, and the public has deep doubts about the safety of high-speed rail. There will be 16 high-speed rail incidents in 2021, 27 in 2022, and 10 from January to February 2023. In particular, 8 incidents occurred in February this year, 5 of which were vehicle failures.

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Li Kunze said that there have been so many abnormal driving incidents on the high-speed rail recently, from point switches, turnouts to pantograph incidents, in addition to causing vehicle delays, there is also the possibility of major incidents. After all, major driving accidents are multiple abnormal incidents Accumulated, calling on the high-speed rail company to face the problem honestly.

Jiang Yaozong, chairman of the Taiwan High Speed ​​Rail Corporation, said that since the opening of Taiwan’s high-speed rail, traffic anomalies have been decreasing year by year. After the abnormality of the pantograph, the system components, electronic and motor control parts, etc. have been thoroughly inspected and there is no abnormality. After replacing the entire set of pantographs, the pantograph has no abnormality again.

Wang Guocai said that the high-speed rail company was very anxious about the abnormality of the high-speed rail pantograph and asked the original factory Kawasaki Heavy Industries to help find the cause. In addition to the equipment, it also investigated whether it was an external environmental factor of the Miaoli tunnel group. At present, he has asked the high-speed rail chairman and general manager Managers need to identify problems quickly.