Print

Mail

wiki links

Feature: TRA may still give THSRC a run for its money

"Perhaps the company [THSRC] was pre-occupied with scouting for hunks and babes and recruiting them as service personnel, rather than focusing on the real thing [quality service]."

Chang Rong-hua, station master

To train users like Lo Wan-fu (羅萬福), making comparisons between the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) and the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) is all too easy.

Although unable to compete in terms of speed, the TRA possesses other pluses, which mean that for many it will remain the No. 1 for train travel.

Lo said the Taiwan Railway was good enough for him since he only has to travel from Taipei to Yinge (鶯歌) on a daily basis.

Though Lo complained about annoying train delays, he said the relatively frequent trains -- a commuter train every eight to 15 minutes during rush hour at TRA -- compensated for this shortcoming.

While high speed rail passengers can only purchase advance tickets from automatic ticketing machines and ticketing personnel, TRA passengers are able to order tickets online, by telephone and in person.

Also, TRA advance tickets can be sold one to two weeks before the scheduled date of travel, whereas those for the high speed rail must be ordered four weeks ahead.

Moreover, TRA gives a 10 percent discount to roundtrip ticket buyers whose stations of departure and arrival are the same. No such privilege is enjoyed by high speed rail customers.

Meanwhile, for those who want to return their tickets, TRA charges them an NT$13 processing fee per ticket. The processing charge is NT$30 for high speed rail passengers.

Chaos, confusion, or perhaps nightmare seem to be appropriate terms characterizing the situation on Tuesday, when the THSRC began to sell advance tickets for its scheduled trial operations on Friday.

Computer glitches almost caused the entire ticketing system to meltdown. Angry customers shouted at THSRC staff because they were unable to complete transactions for any one of a number of reasons.

Cheng Ming-chang (鄭銘彰), chairman of Taiwan's Railway Culture Society and the managing editor of bi-monthly magazine Railway News, said that THSRC's performance last week "deserves to be criticized."

He added that the company would have to do a lot of work to regain customers' trust.

Specifically, he said the company must remove the setting in the ticketing system requires a PIN number for credit card purchases.

"The system's setting is way too strict," he said, "I suspect the person who designed the ticketing system has little experience of taking trains."

In Cheng's view, the flawed THSRC ticketing system was the main factor that slowed down the ticket-buying process last week. For example, instead of designing customized keyboards or a touch screen system that allows ticketing personnel to quickly access data, the company's clerks still have to use a mouse to click on customer options.

Another example Cheng mentioned was the design of ticket-checking gates. While TRA passengers can purchase tickets from automatic ticketing machines and pass through the gates without having to identify the arrow sign on the ticket first, THSRC passengers must check to see that the arrow sign is facing upwards before inserting the tickets into the slots.

Thus a ticket-checking process that only takes TRA passengers about a second to finish could take THSRC passengers five seconds to complete.

"Japan's Shinkansen system was able to facilitate the transportation of a huge number of railway users because of simple yet well-planned systems," he said.

The fact that a ticketing system could collapse because more than 7,000 users entered their ticket requests simultaneously is mind-boggling to some senior TRA officials.

The user interface developed by TRA was based on more than 20 years of railway operating experience, whereas the ticketing system for the high speed rail service was modeled on one used by airline companies.

Chang Rong-hua (張榮華), station master at Taipei Main Station, told the Taipei Times that rail use is generally heaviest during the Lunar New Year with up to 150,000 passengers a day.

"Trains may be delayed, but we have never had to deal with a crashed computer system," Chang said, adding that the huge bandwidth provided by Chunghwa Telecom allows it to process data in an expedient fashion and through a stable network.

Sensing that the comparison might seem a bit self-serving, Chang attempted to defend the situation last week as a typical performance for a railway service starter.

"Perhaps the company [THSRC] was pre-occupied with scouting for hunks and babes and recruiting them as service personnel, rather than focusing on the real thing [quality service]." he said.
This story has been viewed 1724 times.