New trains can boost ridership
Before the Double Ten National Day holiday, I took a business trip from Tainan to Taipei on Friday last week. It was easy to get a high-speed rail (HSR) ticket from Tainan to Taipei at noon that day, but in the afternoon, I had a hard time securing a return ticket to Tainan. In the meantime, many Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) tickets were still available. As long as I would be willing to take a limited express train and spend four hours and 20 minutes on it, I would be able to get a train ticket.
On the eve of the end of the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, people formed a line longer than 3km at the Taichung HSR station. The estimates were that it would take two hours before anyone could get on a train. Clearly, the HSR has become like the TRA. Some believe that it is because the HSR tickets are too cheap, so that the reserved seats cars are full of passengers with tickets for non-reserved seats. They say that raising the ticket price would be the solution. Is that so?
What Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp needs to do is control the number of tickets sold for non-reserved seats for each train, otherwise train cars would often be packed. Worse, passengers with tickets for reserved seats might not be able to get into their cars.
Over the past 27 years, the TRA has never raised its ticket prices. This might change soon, creating another problem for Taiwan’s transportation system. Today, not many people prefer taking a TRA train. After the fare increase, it is possible that even fewer people would opt for those trains.
For example, a trip from Taipei to Tainan on the HSR costs NT$1,350, compared with NT$738 for the TRA limited express ticket. The former takes about one-and-a-half to two hours, while the latter takes at least four hours and 20 minutes.
Fortunately, the TRA’s new EMU3000 intercity express trains would shorten travel time. It takes three-and-a-half hours for an EMU3000 train to travel from Taipei to Tainan. If the old TRA limited express trains can be replaced with EMU3000s, the TRA might appear to be a favorable option. Besides, the TRA stations in most places are in central areas, unlike HSR stations that are mostly outside of cities and towns.
Considering the time we have to spend traveling from our homes to stations, the TRA, with cheaper tickets, could still attract a certain number of passengers.
Lin Po-kuan
Taipei
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