Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Jian-yu (陳建宇) yesterday promised more transparency in the ticket sales for trains heading to the east coast after lawmakers said that scalpers were able to exploit the loopholes of the ticket-booking system and had purchased nearly 2 million tickets this year.
Chen made the remarks at the legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday, when it was scheduled to review the budget of the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) for fiscal 2016.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) said that tickets for TRA trains heading to the east coast are in high demand because there are many loopholes in the railway operator’s ticketing system. She said that the system allows multiple people to book tickets with one ID number, adding that some people can even crack the code of restrictions set for the ID number and book tickets in large quantities.
Yeh also mentioned other abuses of the ticketing system. She said that some people used public IP addresses to purchase tickets under fake names, and some crafts stores in Hualien used illegal computer programs to quickly enter the system to secure tickets.
Others have claimed to purchase tickets on behalf of a group of Chinese tourists, but then resold them after they received the tickets, Yeh said.
Yeh said that the administration detected 78 abnormalities in the ticketing system between January and August this year, when about 1.89 million tickets were obtained by scalpers. She blamed the administration for failing to find an effective way to curb such “outrageous” abuses of the system, which she said have occurred for years.
She demanded that the situation be addressed immediately, as the nation would soon observe the New Year holiday, Lunar New Year holiday and 228 Memorial holiday.
In response, Chen said that he would ask the state-run railway operator to disclose the sale of tickets for east-coast-bound trains operating during the Lunar New Year holiday next year.
TRA Director-General Chou Yung-hui (周永暉) said that the Railway Police Bureau only found evidence of wrongdoing in three of 78 reported abnormalities in the system, and only 14 of the 1.89 million tickets were confirmed to have been obtained through illegal means.
Chou said that the administration is trying to filter out some IP addresses, under which a large number of tickets were booked. Apart from ID numbers, he said that the administration would also revamp the CAPTCHA verification code in the ticketing system, as some people had easily outsmarted the security system and booked a large number of tickets.
Chou said that the administration still needs to ascertain through data analysis how many of the seemingly ill-gotten tickets have actually been used and how many of those purchased tickets were refunded on the day of departure.
While Chou said that a new ticketing system, which is scheduled to be launched in 2017, would better handle these abuses, he added that the fundamental solution is to increase the supply of train services and offer various discount plans, making obtaining train tickets through illegal methods an even riskier task.
The administration said that it is aware that some people use fast ticket-booking software to simultaneously enter 10 or more ID numbers to secure tickets, but added it could do nothing about it as long as the IDs are valid and the payments are made in time.
Meanwhile, Chen promised to present to the committee a new pricing scheme for TRA railway tickets as soon as possible, which have not been adjusted for more than 20 years.
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