The Taipei City Government yesterday asked the Fair Trade Commission to investigate the “unfair treatment” it received from the Kaohsiung City Government over the southern municipality’s failure to accept EasyCards on all its public transportation systems or offer discounts to EasyCard holders transferring between the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system and a bus.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) in a question-and-answer session with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Chin Huei-chu (秦慧珠) said the Taipei Department of Transportation had filed a complaint with the commission, asking it to rule on the unequal tolling policy the Kaohsiung City Government had introduced for EasyCard Corp and Kaohsiung-based iPass Corp.
The Kaohsiung City Government has a 32.3 percent stake in iPass Corp, while the Taipei City Government owns a 40 percent stake in EasyCard Corp.
EasyCard and iPass users enjoy the same discounts and fares when using Taipei’s public transportation systems, including a 20 percent discount when taking the MRT and a NT$8 discount when they transfer between the MRT and a bus.
They are also charged just NT$5 for the first 30 minutes when they use the city’s YouBike public bicycles, the Taipei City Government said.
In Kaoshiung, EasyCard holders are only given a 15 percent discount when they travel on the MRT, it said.
EasyCard holders are not given discounts when they transfer between the MRT and a bus or when they use Kaohsiung’s public bicycle system, while iPass users are, it said.
Kaohsiung’s light rail system does not accept EasyCards, it said.
Taipei’s complaint has sparked a war of words between the two municipalities, with Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) yesterday attributing the difference in discounts offered to EasyCard and iPass holders to EasyCard Corp’s failure to modify its card readers — a move that is necessary to equalize the fares collected from iPass and EasyCard users transferring between the MRT and a bus.
Chen’s remarks drew criticism from EasyCard Corp, which accused the Kaohsiung City Government of deliberately causing trouble for the company.
The card readers require three months to modify, but Kaohsiung only made known its willingness to offer EasyCard users discounts one day before it started accepting EasyCards in its MRT system on July 1, leaving EasyCard Corp not enough time to make the adjustments, it said.
EasyCard Corp has not modified the machines because Kaohsiung said it plans to change the discount for people transferring between the MRT and a bus, it said.
When Taipei started accepting the iPass, the Taipei City Government upgraded its card readers using subsidies issued by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, but EasyCard Corp would have to pay about NT$5 million to install new card readers at Kaohsiung’s MRT stations and on its buses, which is “yet another form of inequality,” the company said.
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