Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuan-shih (葉匡時) yesterday said that ticket prices for high-speed rail services, as well as regular train services provided by the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA), would not be raised this year, adding that domestic airfares would also not be adjusted before September.
Yeh made the statements at the legislature’s Transportation Committee, where he was briefing lawmakers about the adjustment of ticket prices in transport systems overseen by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, as well as what the ministry would do following the suspension of high speed rail services caused by a malfunctioning signaling system on Thursday last week.
“I have talked with chairman Ou [Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) chairman Ou Chin-der (歐晉德)] and the company is entitled to raise ticket prices based on its contract with the government,” Yeh said. However, “considering the public perception about its operations at the moment, it’s better not to talk about this matter [raising ticket prices] now.”
Ou said that the ministry had approved a proposed basic rate increase from NT$3.655 per kilometer to NT$4.009 per kilometer.
“We would have to consider several factors before making any adjustments to ticket prices, including the system’s operational costs, competitive aspects, passenger demand and the overall economic environment,” Ou said.
Both the TRA and the Directorate General of Highways (DGH) said that the state-run railway service, as well as highway bus operators, have no plans to raise ticket prices now.
The Civil Aeronautic Administration (CAA), on the other hand, recently proposed increasing domestic airfares by between 6 percent and 35 percent, given that oil prices have more than doubled since 2004.
Yeh said that he has yet to see the new rates proposed by the CAA, but that no adjustments would be made before September.
The Tourism Bureau said that it is planning to start charging travelers entrance fees to several of the nation’s scenic spots this year, including Guishan Island (龜山島) off the coast of Yilan and the Liangshan Rest Area (涼山遊憩區) in the Maolin National Scenic Area Administration in Greater Kaohsiung.
Travelers to the island would be charged NT$100, while those visiting the Liangshan Rest Area would have to pay NT$50.
Meanwhile, lawmakers expressed dissatisfaction about how THSRC handled last week’s service suspension.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Chia-cheng (盧嘉辰) said that the company only informed passengers about the suspension of services during the incident, but it did not assist them in transferring to other forms of transport.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lee Kun-tse (李昆澤) said that the company had had about 1,600 operational incidents in the past six years, and one-third of them were mechanical errors. He questioned whether company had failed to tighten its operations.
KMT Legislator Lin Kuo-cheng (林國正) said the company had communication problems with the ministry and the Bureau of High Speed Rail (BHSR).
“The company began to suspend services at 6:30am. The BHSR director general did not know about the incident until around 6:20am and the ministry was not informed about the incident until 6:40am. Do you see what the problem was? The ministry was behind the passengers in knowing about this incident,” Lin said.
Ou apologized for any inconvenience caused to the public because of the incident, adding that the company had been in contact with the Japanese manufacturer of the signaling system to identify the cause of the problem.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching