The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) announced a plan yesterday that would allow passengers to purchase in one place tickets for regular Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) trains and the future high-speed rail line.
Automatic ticket machines for both the TRA and the high-speed rail will be installed at every regular and high speed rail station. Counters selling TRA and high speed rail tickets will also be available to those who request assigned seats in advance.
MOTC minister Kuo Yao-chi (
The integration will first be implemented at major stations nationwide, and eventually at minor stations too, she added.
She noted that the ministry's long-term goal was to consolidate the services of TRA, the High Speed Rail and the Taipei Rapid Transit System, through the implementation of an integrated circuit (IC) card that could be used with all three services. But she added that the ministry has not set a timetable for achieving that.
"The technical part of the integration can be easily dealt with," Kuo said, "but the different agencies will have to work out a deal to settle the accounts, which could be challenging and take a long time."
Kuo said the ministry has suggested to the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp that they provide ticketing services at post offices.
Kuo's comments came after the administration announced its plan last week to streamline train services, including ticketing systems.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift