The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) released a survey yesterday that showed that close to 60 percent of the population have neither taken the high speed rail nor felt the need to take it.
The results showed that 78 percent of adults aged 20 and above have not taken the high speed rail. Among them, nearly 76 percent of them said they do not need to use it.
Su Yuan-chiung (蘇媛瓊), chief of the ministry's statistics department, said that the public was also divided on perceptions of the ticket prices for the high speed rail.
While about 45 percent of those surveyed said the current prices were reasonable, close to 50 percent said that the scheme was unreasonable, she said.
For those who have taken the high speed rail, approximately 44 percent would choose not to take it again because it increases their travel expenses, she said.
Besides the low demand, those who have not taken the high speed rail cited other reasons. Around 13 percent said it was a hassle to travel to the nearest high speed rail station and 7 percent said the ticket prices were too expensive.
The survey was conducted between Sept. 17 and Sept. 28, when computer-assisted telephone interviews were administered, collecting 1,713 valid samples around the nation. The data was analyzed with a confidence level of 95 percent.
The survey also produced other significant results. Overall, around 45 percent of the population used automobiles to travel to the high speed rail stations. Upon arrival, close to 30 percent said they had asked someone to pick them up.
The results showed that males, the educated, government workers and those with a monthly salary of NT$200,000 or above were most likely to take the high speed rail.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,