Angry residents from Hualien County demonstrated outside the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in downtown Taipei Monday, appealing for an early start to the long-delayed project to upgrade the eastern county's major roadway. Led by Hualien County Magistrate Fu Kun-chi, demonstrators held banners reading 'Safe Road Home, ' 'Don't Treat Hualien Residents as Wildlife, ' 'Start the Suhua Highway Upgrade Project Quickly' and 'Give Us the Suhua Freeway' to emphasize their demand for a safe road to travel home. The protest rally came after deadly rockslides on the accident-prone Suhua Highway on Oct. 21 caused heavy casualties. The demonstrators traveled to Taipei in two groups. One team, led by Fu, started the long journey Sunday night by buses which had to detour via the southern port city of Kaohsiung to reach the capital city, since some sections of the Suhua Highway remain closed to traffic after the torrential rains brought by Typhoon Megi triggered rockslides. The other team took a train at midnight Sunday to reach Luodong in neighboring Yilan County, where they transferred to tour buses that took them to Taipei early Monday. The demonstrators were scheduled to march from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, passing the Presidential Office, to conclude at the Environmental Protection Administration in protest at what they called the central government's procrastination in improving the cliff-edge Suhua Highway that connects their county to Yilan and Taipei. 