Minister of Transportation and Communications Hochen Tan’s (賀陳旦) proposal to reform Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) ticket prices was yesterday queried by transportation experts, who said he should ensure that there is a seamless transition between different transport systems and plan for the development of the public transportation systems nationwide before discussing lowering ticket fares.
Hochen revealed his plan to amend the Railway Act (鐵路法) in a recent interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (Taipei Times’ sister newspaper).
He said the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ (MOTC) draft amendment would allow the TRA and other railway operators to charge passengers based on the train cabins they want.
Hochen said a railroad could divide cabins into business class, economy class and tourism cabins and set different ticket prices based on operational costs.
International visitors might be charged more on railway lines that are primarily designed for tourism, he added.
The Taiwan High Speed Rail system has business and economy-class cabins as well as different pricing for reserved and unreserved seats.
Lee Ker-tsung (李克聰), an associate professor at Feng Chia University’s department of transportation technology and management, said the ministry should focus on improving the quality of train services before deciding to impose differential rates.
“People are more likely to think that it is worth it if they pay 20 percent or 30 percent more to access a better service,” Lee said.
The Society of Railway and National Planning Taiwan also criticized the proposal, saying that the ministry should not focus on changing the TRA’s ticket scheme.
The nation has two main railway corridors, one on the west coast and the other on the east coast and commuters, homebound travelers and tourists access the same trains when they travel along those corridors, the society said.
People choose a train service based on time and what they can afford, it added.
The two coasts are also served by short-distance railway or bus systems, the society said.
It said that the MOTC has yet to integrate all the transport systems, and people need to search for information themselves, then book tickets through different ticketing systems and locate bus or train stations on their own.
As Taiwan has a good national highway network, there is a higher percentage of people who use privately owned vehicles for transportation, the society said.
“This also explains why traffic congestion has increased nationwide during major national holidays,” it said.
“People have to battle the traffic to reach their destinations. Many of the nation’s public transport systems are not financially sustainable because they cannot attract enough passengers,” the society said.
“The design of our public transport system is often out of synch with how the government plans the use of land. Even if the government could reduce public transport ticket prices and build more integrated systems, it cannot change the ‘status quo’ without a thorough national spatial planning strategy and accurate projection of the demands for transport systems,” it said.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS