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Traffic recovering from Typhoon Megi

Traffic recovering from Typhoon Megi

Traffic recovering from Typhoon Megi

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – With the Central Weather Bureau planning to end the final land and sea warnings for Typhoon Megi at 5:30 p.m., traffic in Taiwan was gradually returning to normal Wednesday.
Megi had been downgraded to a tropical storm and was making its way across China’s province of Fujian after having left a trail of destruction in Taiwan. Nevertheless, forecasters still warned that up to 19 cities and counties could face torrential rain over the next few days, keeping the likelihood of flooding and landslides a real danger.
The high-speed rail line between Taipei and Kaohsiung resumed operations Wednesday afternoon, and so did most of the trains, though traffic was still being hampered by the occasional incident, such as a landslide on a railway track near Keelung.
Passengers on some Mass Rapid Transit lines in the capital had to wait 15 minutes for a train, as Wednesday was still officially declared a typhoon day off, even though the storm itself had moved far away.
Taipei’s YouBike system also resumed operations at 3 p.m., the city government announced.
Buses in Taichung City took to the road again at noon after they had suspended service during the worse of the storm on Tuesday.
The main central cross-island road remained closed off to traffic due to falling rocks and landslides near the Taroko Gorge in Hualien County, while the road between Suao and Hualien had also been cut off in several locations, reports said. In Kaohsiung City, the district of Qishan had been hit by severe flooding, which had not yet entirely subsided, reports said.
The closures of offices and schools all around Taiwan Wednesday succeeded in drawing crowds out to visit shopping malls and cinema complexes, most of which had lost a day of business on Tuesday.
According to government statistics, damage to agriculture had reached a total of NT$341 million (US$10.8 million) nationwide, but this was not expected to be the final figure.