Faulty traffic signals between Taipei and Sungshan station on Thursday morning caused dozens of trains to be delayed, prompting an apology from the Taiwan Railway Administration to the 6,000 commuters who were affected.

Director-General of the TRA Chen Feng-nan was quoted in the Chinese-language press as saying that human negligence was the main cause of the problem, and that he would get to the bottom of the matter and find out who was responsible. Chen apologized to all those who were affected by the delays.

According to the TRA, the traffic signals between Taipei station and Sungshan station went dead at 6 a.m. on Thursday. A total of 49 trains were affected, with 40 being delayed, and 9 forced to either suspend service or shorten their scheduled routes, the TRA said.

The trains were delayed for 44 minutes on average, inconveniencing some 6,000 commuters, most of whom complained about the delay, according to Chinese-language news reports.

As the traffic signals were not restored until 8:45 a.m. －－ almost three hours later －－ 168 commuters were guaranteed full fare refund under a TRA regulation that took effect this month. Under the new rule, TRA passengers can obtain a full refund if they suffer delays of one hour or more.

According to the TRAs report on the incident, the power supply between Taipei station and Sungshan station went off at 2:30 a.m. on Thursday morning, but the staff on duty did not notice the power cut until 6 a.m. The automatic backup power supply kicked in but was all used up during the period while the main power was off, which left the traffic signals between Taipei Station and Sungshan Station without power on Thursday morning, the report stated.