Taipei Rapid Transit Corp will continue to follow the 20 percent discount policy for passengers who use Taipei’s MRT system, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said, adding that discount rates will vary according to ridership frequency.
Ko made the announcement during a radio interview with Taipei Broadcasting Station, after a caller asked whether the proposed cancelation of MRT discounts would be enacted.
Ko said the discount would not be canceled, but will be offered in another form, where passengers will be rewarded according to their loyalty to the MRT system.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
“For example, people who spend NT$500 [US$15.42] on the MRT will receive a 20 percent discount and those who spend NT$1,000 will receive a higher discount,” Ko said. “The more you use the MRT, the more you save.”
Ko said that the company has a surplus of NT$500 million from its operations last year, “meaning there is still some more room.”
He said he would ask the company to generate more revenue by stepping up efforts in other services it provides, such as renting out more advertising space in MRT stations.
When asked whether the relocation of the Taipei Songshan International Airport (Songshan airport) would be feasible, Ko said it would be once the third terminal and runway at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the MRT airport line and the Wugu-Yangmei Overpass expansion are completed.
“The Songshan airport cannot be closed. It can only be relocated. So the capacity of Taoyuan airport must be increased,” he said.
When asked whether Taipei would consider building a seawater desalination plant to respond to murky tap water generated by typhoons, Ko said it is highly unlikely that the city would have turbid tap water under new standard operating procedures.
Ko said water purification plants will stop tapping water once raw water turbidity reaches 12,000 nephelometric turbidity units and a NT$2 billion pipeline connecting the Nanshih River (南勢溪) and the Jhihtan Water Purification Plant will be built to prevent murky tap water from being supplied to the city.
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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