Pan-blue camp lawmakers sitting on the legislative Transportation Committee yesterday lashed out at Minister of Transportation and Communications Tsai Duei (
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wang Yu-ting (
People First Party (PFP) Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) said that there were no regulations to monitor the high speed rail's standards of service, and that problems like the one that occurred on Tuesday was an example of inadequate service for which there was no formal accountability.
Lee said the Railway Law would not suffice as a regulator of the high speed rail's operations.
He added that the regulations would have to be amended to ensure that the public interest was protected.
MODES OF TRANSPORT
He cited rules for other modes of transport that could be used to provide a more thorough regulatory environment for the high speed rail.
Since the rail system would be operating at speeds reaching 300kph, some provisions of the Aviation Act (
PFP Legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (
"The only thing that the high speed rail brings to mind is like when you're in Las Vegas, where you pull the bar on the slot machines and all the coins fall out," Liu said.
NEW PLAN
Bureau of High Speed Rail Director-General Pang Chia-hua (
As regulations only require the company to improve its service within a certain -- unstated -- period of time, no fine could be imposed on the company, Pang said.
THSRC representative Ted Chia (賈先德) said yesterday that the company's board of directors had generally agreed to a proposal to extend the period of trial operations.
The original trial period ends on Sunday next week.
REGRET
The THSRC yesterday also expressed its regret at the ongoing problems with the ticket booking process.
The company insisted, however, that the situation was not as bad yesterday as on Tuesday.
It said that it would have the problems with vending machines and credit-card machines fixed soon.
At 6:30pm yesterday, the THSRC said it had sold 52,163 tickets.
The company sold 86,745 tickets on Tuesday.
Additional reporting by Jessie Ho
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