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Glitches mar THSRC ticket sales

Thousands of people flood into the Banciao station of Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp for the first day of ticket sales yesterday. The company is offering a 50 percent discount on tickets for the test runs that begin Friday and end on Jan. 14. PHOTO: LO PEI-TER, TAIPE TIMES

Thousands of people flooded into the eight stations of Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) for the first day of ticket sales yesterday, but frequent malfunctions in the booking system made a lot of people unhappy.

With official operations set to begin on Friday, THSRC began selling tickets yesterday for the first 10 days of operation.

Ticket counters opened at 6am.

To encourage more people to try the new rail system, the company announced last week that it would offer a 50 percent discount on the fares for the test runs and would also sell 50,000 commemorative tickets.

Apparently attracted by the reduced prices or the novelty of the new rail system, people started to line up in front of the ticket booths at every THSRC station on Monday evening in the hopes of being among the first passengers of the nation's first north-south high-speed railway.

The line will run between Banciao (板橋), Taipei County, and Tsoying (左營) in Kaohsiung City.

A standard ticket between Banciao and Tsoying costs NT$1,460 (US$45) for an economy-class seat and NT$2,390 for a business-class seat.

But the patience of those in line was sorely tested yesterday by frequent errors in the booking process, including malfunctioning vending machines and credit-card machines.

Some people complained that it took 20 to 30 minutes to purchase one ticket.

Others were upset that the vending machines only returned coins, not bills.

THSRC executive director Ou Chin-der (歐晉德) apologized for the inconvenience.

He said the company had not expected the huge volume of bookings, which caused the system to crash.

"We expect to sell 30,000 tickets a day ? obviously we underestimated demand," Ou said.

Minister of Transportation and Communications Tsai Duei (蔡堆) visited the Banciao station and was not happy with what he saw.

"The high speed rail is such an advanced system, but its ticketing system is so backwards," he said.

Tsai said that regardless of the reason for yesterday's snafus, THSRC needed to find the problem and resolve it immediately.

He said that there was no excuse for such errors.

As of 8pm, THSRC said it had sold 81,168 tickets.

Ticket booths were scheduled to remain open until 10pm, but the company decided to close the lines in the afternoon to help ease congestion in the stations.

Company officials decided not to accept ticket requests from anyone who arrived at the Banciao Station after 2:30pm and later instituted similar measures at the other stations.

THSRC will resume selling tickets for trains running from Friday to Jan. 14 at 6am today.

Once tickets for the first 10 days' trains are sold out -- a total of 380 trains -- the company will halt ticket sales.

Samuel Lin (林鵬良), deputy chief operations officer of THSRC's Railway Operation Division, said last night that trains No. 401 and No. 403 on Saturday are already sold out.

Unlike the Taiwan Railway Administration's policy of selling standing-room tickets when there are no more seats available on its trains, THSRC will only sell tickets for seats.

Additional reporting by Shelley Shan
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