The nation’s bullet train set a new monthly record for ridership last month, carrying 3.69 million passengers, Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) said on Monday.
It was the first time that the number of people using high-speed rail in a single month exceeded 3.5 million.
The previous high was set in April at 3.48 million.
Last month’s ridership was 16.8 percent higher than the same month a year earlier and averaged 119,000 passengers per day.
The railway has served 23.72 million people in the first seven months of the year, an increase of 2.4 million, or 11.3 percent, from a year earlier, THSRC statistics showed.
Company officials said that as of Sunday, more than 139.14 million passengers have used the system, which began commercial operations in early 2007.
The high-speed rail network has replaced air travel as the most popular form of long-distance public transportation in western Taiwan.
Ridership first exceeded 3 million in a single month in February last year and has continued to set new milestones since then. It surpassed the 3.35 million mark in December and rose to 3.4 million in February, according to THSRC.
Daily ridership has soared from 43,000 passengers per day in 2007 to 83,000 in 2008, 88,000 in 2009, 101,000 last year and 111,000 in the first seven months.
Shares of THSRC, which currently trade on the GRETAI Securities Market’s emerging stock board, fell 0.2 percent to NT$5 yesterday.
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