Taipei City Government

A joint exercise was held at Taipei Main Station to examine the preparedness of participating agencies in the evening of August 10.
During his address, Mayor Ko noted that repeated drills will help the area around Taipei Main Station to become safer. He also took the opportunity to express his gratitude to the staff of Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA), Taiwan High Speed Railway (HSR), and Taoyuan Metro for their input.
The mayor admitted that given the massive number of travelers accessing Taipei Main Station (roughly between 500,000 to 600,000 daily), the joint disaster prevention center will likely take two years to establish. However, the creation of the center is necessary for the traffic hub connecting trains of TRA, HSR, AMRT, MRT, and numerous bus and coach lines. The temporary joint disaster prevention center is currently located on the fourth floor of the train station.
As for the emergency exercise, the mayor noted that information on the drill’s time and date has been announced, but no information on content has been released prior to the scheduled event. The main objective for the drill is to identify flaws through actual exercise.
Responding to media questions on whether he was satisfied with the speed of evacuation, the mayor said it is impossible to achieve full marks for any drills. The purpose of the exercise is to locate flaws through a major operation involving TRA, HSR, AMRT, and MRT, as well as the commercial district and the Fire Department. Through the exercise, flaws can be examined and overcome to enhance overall safety of the traffic hub.