The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) yesterday announced that it would increase train services with family carriages next month given their popularity.
The family-oriented carriages have been in demand since they were launched last year, the agency’s mechanics division chief Lai Hsing-lung (賴興隆) said, adding that about 90 percent of family carriage seats are sold out.
The TRA plans to renovate another 20 carriages by summer next year and has completed five, Lai said.
There are two train services with family cars, the 418 train from Shulin to Taitung and the 443 train from Taitung to Shulin that operate every Sunday — both are Tze-Chiang Limited Express trains with one family carriage, Lai said.
Starting on March 3, two more train services with family carriages are to operate every Sunday, on the West Coast Line, southbound train 123 and northbound train 150, he said.
Family car tickets are the same price as standard car tickets, but have only 12 seats, allowing room for strollers and desks, as well as breastfeeding rooms and family bathrooms, Lai said.
The cars’ exterior and interior are decorated with paintings of the Tourism Bureau mascot OhBear and the TRA mascot bear.
Tickets for seats in family cars are sold the same way regular carriage tickets are sold: Every Friday at midnight, tickets for travel next Sunday are available for booking online and at train stations.
When booking family carriage tickets online, customers should select one-way tickets and enter the train number, then select the family car option, the TRA said.
If the booking is successful, the buyer will receive a code to collect their ticket at the station.
The maximum number of family car tickets a single person can purchase is six, the TRA said.
The TRA is also to offer 12 bicycle carriages by summer next year. The cars will have bicycle racks to allow cyclists to travel with their bikes.
To ensure sufficient room, each bicycle car will have only 12 seats, the TRA said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS