Kuo-Kuang Motor Transportation Co and United Highway Bus Co yesterday announced that they are to raise ticket prices on March 4 after they last month pledged to freeze the price increase until after the Lunar New Year holiday.
The two freeway bus operators originally planned to cancel some of the discounts available to medium and long-distance travelers in view of higher operational costs caused by a spike in oil prices.
However, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications urged the companies to halt the measure at least until after the Lunar New Year holiday, as oil prices have fallen and it would affect passengers.
While the companies agreed to temporarily keep their ticket prices unchanged, they announced on their Web sites that they would introduce ticket price adjustments on March 4.
However, customers who purchase tickets before March 31 could still receive special discounts, they added.
United said that it decided to cancel some discounts because of soaring operational costs in the past few years.
Ticket prices are estimated to increase by about NT$20 to NT$40 for medium to long-distance bus services, it said, adding that the special discounts before March 31 would cause prices to increase by only about NT$5 to NT$20.
Kuo-Kuang estimated that the ticket price would rise by about NT$10 to NT$40, citing similar reasons for the increase.
From March 4 to March 31, the price would only increase by NT$5 to NT20 because of special discounts, it added.
The special discounts are being offered because of the recent decline in oil price, the bus operators said, adding that whether they would continue to offer discounts in April would depend on oil prices at that time.
Meanwhile, Capital Bus and Kamalan Bus last month already implemented a new ticketing scheme, but chose to reinstate special discounts this month following discussions with ministry officials.
However, both have indicated that they are to again start implementing the new scheme some time after the Lunar New Year holiday.
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
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
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