Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and New Taipei Mayor Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) broke ground on the construction of the first metro line section in New Taipei’s Shulin District on Friday.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the 6.6-kilometer section in Shulin marked the beginning of the second phase of the construction of Taipei Metro’s Light Green Line, currently being built between Taipei and New Taipei, according to the New Taipei City Department of Rapid Transit Systems.
The Light Green Line, also known as the Wanda-Zhonghe-Shulin Line, will connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station in Taipei and Huilong Station in New Taipei’s Xinzhuang District, and expand the Taipei Metro network to Shulin for the first time, according to the department.
At the ceremony, Ko said Taipei’s metro system initially began with lines linking the city center with several districts in New Taipei and had now entered the stage of building a network.
Meanwhile, Hou said he hoped a contractor could be found to build the other section in the second phase in New Taipei’s Tucheng District, despite rising costs due to shortage of workers and building materials.
The budget to build the Shulin section was raised by NT$5.2 billion (US$162.82 million) to NT$18 billion before a bidder was secured, the department said in a statement released that day.
The Shulin section covers eight elevated stations, including one in Banqiao, six in Shulin and the Huilong Station in Xinzhuang currently on the Orange Line, according to the department.
The section in Shulin is expected to be completed in 2028, said the department, noting that a new round of the bidding process for the contract to build the section with five stations in Tucheng would take place by the end of this month.
Construction of the Light Green Line’s first phase, the 9.5-km Wanda-Zhonghe section which costs NT$74.18 billion, began in December 2014 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, information on the department’s website showed.
The first phase of the new metro line, which is between Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station and the planned Juguang Station in Zhonghe District in New Taipei, includes nine underground stations and one depot, and is 64.64 percent complete, according to the department.
The Wanda-Zhonghe section will connect to the Taipei Metro’s Red, Green, and Yellow lines.
The department expects the first phase to have a daily ridership of 247,000 and cut travel time between the densely populated districts of Zhonghe and Yonghe in New Taipei and Taipei’s Wanhua and Zhongzheng districts to 17 minutes, compared with 26 minutes on the road.
Once the whole Light Green Line is completed, it will cut travel time by up to 30 minutes for commuters between Shulin and Taipei.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel