The Bannan or Blue line (code BL) is a metro line of

Taipei Metro Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), branded as Metro Taipei, is a rapid transit system serving the areas of Taipei and New Taipei in Taiwan, operated by the government-owned Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation, which also operates the Maokong Gondo ...

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...

, Taiwan, with a total of 23 stations serving the districts of Nangang, Xinyi, Daan,

Zhongshan Zhongshan (; ) is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, China. As of the 2020 census, the whole city with 4,418,060 inhabitants is now part of the Guangzhou–Shenzhen conurbation with 65,565,622 ...

, Wanhua,

Banqiao Banqiao () may refer to: Taiwan *Banqiao District, seat of New Taipei Mainland China *Banqiao Dam (), dam on the Ru River near Zhumadian, Henan that suffered an infamous failure in 1975 *Banqiao Town (disambiguation) *Banqiao Township (disambigua ...

and Tucheng. The line's name is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordscut-and-cover A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

method resulted in large scale detouring of road traffic. Because of that, the line runs beneath existing roads and totals .

Overview

Service on this line is divided into a full-length service from to , as well as a shorter service from to . Due to being at the centre of the

Taipei 101 Taipei 101 (; stylized as TAIPEI 101), formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center, is a supertall skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan. This building was officially classified as the world's tallest from its opening in 2004 until the 2009 ...

New Year's festivities, intervals between trains can be reduced to a minimum of 135 seconds, transporting up to 39,000 passengers per hour. This results in an average of about 27 trains per hour on the line during peak hours.

History

* 8 November 1990: The Nangang section begins construction. * 30 December 1991: The

Taipei Main Station Taipei Main Station () is a railway and metro station in Taipei, Taiwan. It is served by Taiwan High Speed Rail, the Taiwan Railways Administration, and the Taipei Metro. It is also connected through underground passageways to the terminal sta ...

western underground passageway opens. * 24 December 1993: Nangang section construction at the intersection of Zhongxiao East Rd and Shaoxing Rd caves in, causes traffic jams. * 30 October 1998: Construction is completed on the tunnel between Kunyang and Houshanpi. * 24 December 1999: The segment from to begins revenue service. * 31 August 2000: The segment from Longshan Temple to begins revenue service. * 30 December 2000: The segment from to Taipei City Hall begins revenue service. * 17 September 2001: Typhoon Nari floods many stations, rendering them nonoperational. * 29 November 2001: Taipei Main Station re-opens for service. * 30 December 2003: The Nangang section eastern extension to begins construction. * 17 November 2004: The Nangang section eastern extension to begins construction. * 27 May 2006: The segment from to opens for trial operations. * 31 May 2006: The segment from Xinpu to begins revenue service. * 16 May 2008: The Nangang section eastern extension to Nangang begins trial service. * 25 December 2008: The Nangang section eastern extension to Nangang begins revenue service. * 27 February 2011: The rest of the Nangang section eastern extension to Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center opened for service. * 21 May 2014: The

2014 Taipei Metro attack On 21 May 2014, a Taiwanese man carried out a stabbing spree directed at random civilians on a Taipei Metro train near Jiangzicui Station, resulting in four deaths and 24 injuries. It was the first fatal attack on the city's subway system since ...

occurs between Longshan Temple and when 21-year-old university student Cheng Chieh attacked passengers with a fruit knife, leading to 4 deaths and 24 injuries. * 6 July 2015: The Tucheng Section extension to station begins revenue service, the final expansion of the line. * 28 September 2018: Half-height

platform edge doors Platform screen doors (PSDs), also known as platform edge doors (PEDs), are used at some train, rapid transit and people mover stations to separate the platform from train tracks, as well as on some bus rapid transit, tram and light rail sys ...

are installed in Tucheng, making all stations on this line and entire Taipei Metro system have some form of platform doors.

Services

As of December 2017, the typical off-peak service is: * 8 trains per hour (tph) between and * 7 tph between and

Stations

References

{{TRTS Blue Line 1999 establishments in Taiwan Railway lines opened in 1999 Taipei Metro