The Taichung City Government today (4th) submitted the comprehensive planning report on MRT Blue Line to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) for approval. The Taichung City Government has been working actively to gain the approval of the Central Government for the further handling of land acquisition, design, and construction. In the future, when the MRT Blue Line is completed, it will connect core areas of both land and coastal lines and form the cross-axis network with the Green Line. Incorporating with mass transportation means such as railway and bus to improve public transportation services, facilitate balanced urban and rural development in Taichung and provide comprehensive and sound public services for building Taichung as "a MRT and rich city." According to the Director General of the Transportation Bureau, Yeh Chao-Fu, the MRT Blue Line is Taichung’s second MRT and since its feasibility study plan was approved by the Central Government in 2018, the Taichung City Government conducted comprehensive planning operation based on the approval study plan. At present, the planned length was 24.8 kilometers equipped with 20 stations including 8 elevated ones, 12 underground ones, and 1 level 5 maintenance factory. The Bureau said after two-year planning and preparation, relevant governmental agencies were invited to negotiate and collaborate and three public hearings were organized to get to know public opinions. In order to let planned contents meet the needs of the public, adjustments were made under the overall consideration that include Shalu Section is changed from underground to elevated type to facilitate operations and added with one station by moving the original planned station to the north of the Shalu residential area to expand service areas, Xitun Section is changed from elevated to underground to reduce the track slope of Dadushan and added with one station and the original Minchun Rd. Section is optimized with route planning and the route is adjusted to avoid crossing residential units by adopting overlapped route planning to travel on Taiwan Boulevard. After adjustments were made, the MRT Blue Line improved its operating efficiency, expanded service areas and improved overall quality of public transportation. During the comprehensive planning stage, cost basis year was changed from 2015 to 2020 for the consideration of current situation and meanwhile, the Bureau referred to the MRT plans ratified in recent years to conduct reviews on construction costs and land cost of Taiwan Boulevard that is not included in the feasibility study was added to the total cost according to updated market price of the land. At present, the total cost was estimated to be NT$130.9 billion. Director General Yeh pointed out that Mayor Lu Shiow-Yen announced the first priority of the Taichung City government to begin the operation of the MRT Green Line. The Taichung City Government worked with great efforts to review all inspections to timely resume test operation and continuous operation. Additionally, to construct a comprehensive MRT network in Taichung, the Taichung City Government requested the MOTC to speed up review operations of all MRT lines. The MOTC is now reviewing planning operations of each MRT route. The feasibility study of extension of Green Line was sent to the Executive Yuan for approval, the comprehensive planning report of Blue Line was submitted for the approval of the MOTC, the MRT Airport Line was now under the feasibility study and after the approval of the MRT Construction Promotion Group of the Taichung City Government, the study plan was expected to send for the approval of MOTC and a meeting that explains the Blue Line extension was scheduled to be held in the first half of this year to hear opinions from all circles. The Bureau said the Taichung City Government was now constructing the MRT network to connect with transportation means and sites such as public bus, the Taiwan Railways, iBike, transit station and parking lots to develop "the anywhere door of transportation" to effectively improve competitiveness of public transportation and reduce the use of private vehicles. In the future, the roll review method was expected to be adopted in each stage to speed up the official operations of the Taichung MRT for building Taichung as a MRT city.