People who pass through ticketing gates using a Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) QR code would not able to reuse them at a the same station once a strict scanning policy is implemented, the railway agency said yesterday.
The new ticketing system, which was officially launched on April 9, came under scrutiny at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-tse (李昆澤) said that from April 23 to Monday, there were 4,469 instances of the same QR code being used multiple times to pass through ticketing gates, or 319 per day.
Photo: Cheng Wei-chi, Taipei Times
While the agency has warned people that such activity is ticket forgery, carrying a sentence of three to 10 years in jail, the TRA should not use the rules to scare people, Lee said.
It should use technology to prevent people from engaging in criminal acts, he said.
DPP Legislator Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said that the TRA should find a more effective solution to address losses caused by fare evasion, which is nearly NT$100 million (US$3.23 million) per year.
TRA Director-General Chang Cheng-yuan (張政源) said that the agency is testing the ticketing system’s “strict mode,” which is to be fully implemented on June 30.
Once that system is in place, people would only be able to access trains using a QR code once at each station, Chang said.
People with a screenshot or other copy of a used QR code would not be able to use it, he said.
Until the strict mode is activated, conductors would increase ticket inspections, he said.
However, the agency has found that people have rescanned QR codes because they were not sure that the system had logged their passage, which is not fare evasion, Chang said.
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