The nation’s highway authority is predicting a bump in holiday traffic to last through 11pm on Sunday, the third day of a four-day weekend marking children’s day and Tomb Sweeping Day.
Traffic picked up on Sunday, which is the actual Tomb Sweeping Day. People headed out to honor the deceased by cleaning their graves and making offerings. Others took to the roads in the hopes of beating the return traffic at the end of the holiday.
The earliest section of highway to see delays was a 30km southbound section of National Highway Number 1 in the central county of Changhwa. Traffic slowed to about 40km per hour on Sunday morning. Authorities say that before noon, the speeds on the nation’s highways were largely over 80km per hour. They were predicting northbound traffic to slow down in the afternoon, with many people opting to end their vacation early and head back to Taipei.
Authorities canceled tolls between midnight and 5am throughout the weekend in an effort to encourage people to avoid high-congestion times. Official statistics showed that some 170,000 cars were on the highway during the toll-free period on Sunday. That’s 1.9 times the regular average. Officials were predicting between 2.5-2.8 million cars would travel on Taiwan’s highways on Sunday.