The High-Speed Rail is to have fewer trains running weekly from May 18 to June 23, as demand continues to fall amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp said on Friday.
The weekly number of trains is to be cut by 147, the company said, after announcing last month that weekly services would be reduced by 41 trains from yesterday to June 21.
The latest adjustment represents a 18.5 percent decline in weekly trains, down from 1,016 trains.
Despite the reduction, the company said it would ensure reliable travel, with six trains per hour during peak travel times and three to four trains per hour during off-peak times.
Full service is to resume before the Dragon Boat Festival holiday from June 25 to June 28, the company said, adding that before then, services would follow demand.
The company has seen a drastic decrease in demand since February, with passenger volume last month declining 40 percent from a year earlier.
To prevent the spread of the virus, the company assured passengers that it cleans the trains and screens for people with a fever.
All 12 stations are equipped with infrared thermometers to check the temperatures of passengers boarding the trains.
Those with a temperature of more than 37.5°C are not allowed to board and receive a full ticket refund, it said.
The stations are disinfected every two hours, as are the carriages whenever a train arrives at its destination, the company added.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
Taiwan will now have four additional national holidays after the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment today, which also made Labor Day a national holiday for all sectors. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their majority in the Legislative Yuan to pass the amendment to the Act on Implementing Memorial Days and State Holidays (紀念日及節日實施辦法), which the parties jointly proposed, in its third and final reading today. The legislature passed the bill to amend the act, which is currently enforced administratively, raising it to the legal level. The new legislation recognizes Confucius’ birthday on Sept. 28, the
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS