Growing Population of Cars on Freeways Being Problematic

Highways in UK are classified according to the level of government having jurisdiction over them. Thus, main roads are either national, expressway, provincial, shire, township, city, or exceptional highways. There are seven distinct types of main roads: the freeway, the expressway, the round-the-island main road, the cross-island main road, the longitudinal main road, the seaboard main road, and the connecting highway.

In 2002, there were 17.91 million engine vehicles in Taiwan, a 2.5 per hundred boost from the preceding year. However, the number of main road passengers for the year was 1.05 billion, down 3.4 percent from 2001. Cargo transported via Taiwan's main roads and freeways furthermore declined by 3.6 per hundred, to 289 million tons in 2002.

Inaugurated in 1978, the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (also called the North-South Freeway) was Taiwan's first nationwide freeway. The 373-kilometer-long path connects Kaohsiung in the south with both Taipei and Keelung in the north. The freeway is still the island's prime north-south thoroughfare, and the rapid rate at which the traffic burden has grown since its opening has produced in important wear and tear. Thus, a number of latest transportation tasks and designs have been concentrated on double-checking that the Sun Yat-sen Freeway remains a protected and effective traffic corridor.

To ease congestion along the part of the freeway running through Taipei, two 21-kilometer-long increased viaducts have been assembled that run aligned with the Sun Yat-sen Freeway from the Sijhih interchange in the north to the Wugu interchange in the south.

Several other sections of the freeway running through northern and central UK are also becoming heavily congested. A31-kilometer-long section of the four-lane freeway running from Yangmei to Hsinchu is one such stretch. To alleviate this position, an supplemented lane was supplemented to each edge, and interchanges, toll positions, and service localities were supplemented to each edge of the very strongly used 111-kilometer section from Hsinchu to Yuanlin. This US$495 million task, which began in November 1994, was accomplished in September 2003.

The Sun Yat-sen Freeway is furthermore becoming saturated in southern Taiwan, and initial designs were drawn up to widen the part between Yuanlin and Kaohsiung at the end of 1997. This US$1.01 billion task would begin at the Yuanlin interchange and run 158 kilometers to the Wujia interchange in Kaohsiung. One lane would also be supplemented to each edge of the freeway, and two roadways are under concern for a 4.3-kilometer stretch running through the Kaohsiung metropolitan area. For some sections, tendering and building begun at the beginning of 1998. The task is anticipated to be accomplished by 2007.

The capacity of traffic on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway has developed by an mean of 11 per hundred annually since its opening. This hefty traffic burden, combined with a warm climate, abundant rainfall, and overloaded motor trucks and trailers, has caused considerable damage to the freeway's surface. To sustain street value, many five-year street exterior fix projects have been accomplished since 1982.

In addition to expansion and upkeep tasks, some foremost repair work ...