For anyone thinking of driving down south fron Taipei (or going north to Taipei - though can't think why you would want to do that) this weekend along the east coast - forget it. The Su Hwa highway (no. 9) is closed (for at least a week) due to part of the road collapsing and falling down into the sea way below. Luckily, as far as I am aware, no one was injured. The collapse occured at the 115.8 km mark, which is between Su-Ao and Dong Ao and quite close to where the two buses went off the cliff last year during torrential rainfall from a passing typhoon. In this case though, it wasn't even raining, certainly not heavily, which is a bit disturbing. I do wonder if it was in fact a repaired section from that event last year that gave out.
There is a government website on road closures for Taiwan, but there is no mention of this particular road (the only road between Taipei and Hualian) being closed. Perhaps someone knows of a different site with more complete information in English - it would be handy to know as i use this road often.
Although I am a bit ambivalent about plans for a freeway being built directly to Hualian, I do wonder about the viability of the road as it is. It's basically a deathtrap during heavy rain and pretty dangerous at the best of times with its combination of slow climbing heavily loaded trucks, tourist bus convoys, and then people trying to overtake these vehicles on a winding cliff road with no overtaking lanes.
