The government wants to use the appointment of a new board of directors at Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) to deal with the problem of its overpaid executives. This is a controversial issue that will have administrative policy intruding into company operations. Unless handled carefully, it may damage company morale, which would take a long time to rebuild.
While this is a vital matter, the new board could have first dealt with a less sensitive matter unrelated to ownership but that allows different levels of management to make their own decisions, such as planning for travel during the Mid-Autumn Festival, which started yesterday, or other major holidays.
At every major holiday, plans are rolled out for easing holiday traffic. For freeways, the magic solution has long been to suspend toll collection and to allow only cars carrying a certain number of passengers. The high-speed rail usually adds trains while suspending open-seating tickets and other discounts. As a result, driving a car becomes cheaper on public holidays, while travel by high-speed rail, a form of public transport, gets more expensive. Is this in line with the government’s transport policy? Can energy use and emissions be cut this way? How can this be said to be looking after public interests?
In the past, when freeway tolls were collected manually, drivers complained about delays. Toll collection was thus suspended on busy holidays. This allows the government to look benevolent, and drivers see it as a holiday gift. This concession is now taken for granted. Government inspectors turn a blind eye to administrative slackness and losses for the national coffers. For example, toll collection was suspended for nine days over the Lunar New Year, causing a revenue loss of about NT$200 million (US$6.2 million).
Four years ago, the government introduced an electronic toll collection (ETC) system. However, given the ensuing controversy over the build-operate-transfer (BOT) agreement with the operator and public complaints about the system, whether to install the equipment was left to the discretion of drivers.
Now that the government controls THSRC, it wants more reliable funding than was available under the BOT arrangement and it says it will do more to increase passenger volume. THSRC’s management should implement the government’s policies. First, the company should reinstate color-coded discounts suspended on the first and last days of a major holiday. Second, it should allow a suitable number of standing passengers in open-seating carriages and consider adding carriages to increase total passenger capacity and relieve congestion. Under the BOT arrangement, the government was not in a position to make demands of the THSRC, but it should now make adjustments in the interest of the public.
With the next major holiday still months away, the government can use the time to make a push for ending the practice of suspending toll collection on public holidays. More than 45 percent of vehicles now pay freeway tolls by ETC. Increasing the number of ETC lanes at toll stations would increase efficiency and attract drivers to make the switch. Freeway management could then enter a new stage next year.
The government now has real control of the main artery in the public transport system — the high-speed rail. Combining pricing strategy and services, transportation in Taiwan could become more people-oriented and fuel efficient, cutting carbon dioxide and other emissions.
If we care about the high-speed rail’s future, the first thing to do is to get more people to take it.
Hochen Tan is chairman of the Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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