Holders of Kaohsiung MRT Cards or Taiwan Smart Cards will be able to use their cards on the Taipei MRT by the end of this year, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday.
Chen Yen-po (陳彥伯), director-general of the Department of Railways and Highways, said Taipei Rapid Transit would install multiple card readers at 104 ticket gates at its stations, with the project scheduled for completion at the end of the year.
The department said the multiple card readers would be installed on top of the existing ticket gates, which can only read the Taipei EasyCard.
The EasyCard is used on the Taipei MRT system and on public buses in the city, while the Taiwan Smart Card is used on public buses that run in Taoyuan and Chiayi.
The Kaohsiung MRT card is used to access the Kaohsiung MRT system as well as the public bus system in Greater Kaohsiung.
The EasyCard is the largest card system in the nation, with 23 million cards in circulation.
The Taiwan Smart Card and the Kaohsiung MRT card have 1.6 million and 2.1 million cards in circulation respectively.
The installation of the multiple card readers is part of the ministry’s three-year plan to improve the public transportation system.
The ministry’s plans include providing subsidies to public bus and city bus operators to help them install card readers on the buses.
The plan does not include freeway bus operators.
As of May this year, 778 public bus routes around the nation have been equipped with multiple card readers.
Statistics from the department showed that as of July this year, there were 1.7 million records of cardholders using their cards in regions other than their original service area.
The number rose from 11,934 times in May and 586,171 in June to 1,150,466 in July.
Chen said the department was still reviewing a plan submitted by the Kaohsiung MRT system to install multiple-card reading ticket gates.
The department said it should meet its goal of using only one card for travel on public buses, MRT systems and select Taiwan Railway Administration routes by the end of next year.
It said there were still a number of issues that have to be resolved before the high-speed rail could be added to the plan.
A fugitive in a suspected cosmetic surgery fraud case today returned to Taiwan from Canada, after being wanted for six years. Internet celebrity Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), and her former boyfriend, plastic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), allegedly defrauded clients and friends of about NT$1 billion (US$30.66 million). Su was put on a wanted list in 2019 when she lived in Toronto, Canada, after failing to respond to subpoenas and arrest warrants from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Su arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5am today on an EVA Air flight accompanied by a
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
Restarting the No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant would take up to 18 months, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said today. Kuo was answering questions during a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Economics Committee, where legislators are considering amendments to the Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條) amid concerns about the consequences of the Pingtung County reactor’s decommissioning scheduled for May 17. Its decommissioning is to mark the end of Taiwan’s nuclear power production. However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of existing
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
RSS