The operator of the Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit (KMRT) system said at the weekend that the system would handle 11 percent more passengers per day this year than it did last year, easing the financial woes that have plagued the system since it opened in 2008.
As a result of the merger of Kaohsiung city and county on Dec. 25 and the resulting addition of bus lines connecting various areas around what was Kaohsiung County to KMRT stations, the system is expected to handle an average of 141,000 passengers per day this year, a Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) official said.
That would be a big improvement over 2008 and 2009, when the network averaged 118,000 and 127,000 passengers per day respectively, KRTC Department of Public Affairs director Chang Hsiu-chi (張修齊) said.
However, the system still posted an operating loss of NT$2.5 billion (US$86 million) last year, cushioned by a NT$1 billion grant from a Kaohsiung City Government MRT fund.
KRTC would break even if average volume reached 380,000 passengers a day, Chang said. He added that the target was attainable within eight years if passenger numbers grew between 7 percent and 10 percent annually.
To boost passenger numbers, the KMRT operator is also planning to build a light rail rapid transit system around the city, thereby extending the reach of the existing Red Line and Orange Line — the two lines that make up the Kaohsiung MRT system.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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