Ticket prices for Taipei’s Maokong Gondola should return to market rates to make up for years of losses, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said on Sunday.
“Questions of whether there should be a ticket price increase should return to the market,” he said. “The Maokong Gondola has lost money hand over fist, about NT$100 million [US$3.19 million] every year.”
The city had plans to integrate and promote the cable car line together with the Taipei Zoo and the Maokong (貓空) area, he said.
Ko’s comments followed reports in the Liberty Times, (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) quoting Taipei Rapid Transit Corp president Sun Yi-chun (孫以濬) as saying that there are plans to increase ticket prices from NT$50 to NT$90 to reduce operating losses.
The company later sent out a press release saying that the price increase had not been finalized and the Taipei City Government and its Department of Transportation were responsible for making the decision.
“While buses and the MRT are a basic need for which subsidies can be justified, a system used mainly for leisure trips is not a necessity,” Department of Transportation Commissioner Chung Hui-yu (鍾慧諭) said. “Because almost 80 percent of riders are not from Taipei, I don’t think that it should be subsidized by Taipei residents.”
The original decision to establish the gondola as a transportation system to address poor traffic in the area was “inappropriate,” she said, adding that low ticket prices were the reason behind the site’s continuous losses, with the prices far below those used on other gondolas such as the one at Sun Moon Lake (日月潭) in Nantou County.
The Chinese-language China Times reported that ticket prices for the Sun Moon Lake Ropeway were NT$300 — despite being less than half the length of the Maokong system.
Chung said the department’s plan would include favorable rates for residents of the area, with the final plan to be delivered to Ko next month for approval.
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