More than 100 members of Taipei City's "Tour Taxi Fleet" yesterday gathered to promote their English and Japanese language services, while urging the Taipei City Government to put greater effort into making the fleet's service more accessible to foreign visitors.
Established by the Taipei City Transportation Department last year, the service aims to increase Taipei's tourism competitiveness by providing English and Japanese-language services. The fleet includes 83 taxi drivers with English-speaking skills and 28 Japanese-speaking drivers.
To help passengers identify the taxis, the department last year provided stickers for display on the taxi windshields indicating the driver's ability. This year, the department also established a call center for the fleet.
Frank Wang (王憶台), a member of the fleet with English-speaking skills, however, shared his doubts about the effectiveness of the stickers and call centers, urging the city government to seek the cooperation of hotels and major tourist sites and allow the fleet to line up to pick up their target customers directly.
Fleet members Meike Liao (
"I pick up foreigners only two out of seven days in a week, and they don't know I speak English and Japanese until I tell them," Liao said.
Yeh Tzu-chuan (
Arranging exclusive opportunities for fleet members to line up in front of hotels and other tourist sites, however, may be difficult. Major hotels, MRT stations and tourist sites are often occupied and considered the "turf" of certain associations.
Those who need English or Japanese-speaking taxi services can identify the fleet's taxis by the stickers or call the 24-hour dispatch hotline at 0800-011-765.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS