A monthly public transportation pass program that serves Taipei and New Taipei City should be expanded, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) mayoral candidates for Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan said yesterday.
The All Pass Ticket, launched in 2018, offers unlimited use of the Taipei MRT, Danhai light rail, bus services and YouBike rentals of up to 30 minutes in Taipei and New Taipei City for NT$1,280 (US$39.92) per month.
The DPP nominees from the four cities at a news conference called for the program to be expanded to Keelung and Taoyuan, and also cover other forms of public transportation at a lower monthly rate of NT$1,200.
Photo: CNA
In Keelung, for instance, it is essential that the passes cover intercity buses and Taiwan Railways Administration services, which many residents use to commute to work in Taipei, said Legislator Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應), who is running for Keelung mayor.
Former Taichung mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), who is running in New Taipei City, said that the pass system should also cover the Taoyuan Airport MRT and YouBike rentals of any length to provide greater connectivity within the public transport network.
The service expansion would cost about NT$3.5 billion per year, and could be partially subsidized by the central government’s budgets for transportation and net zero emissions.
Former minister of health and welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) and Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬), the party’s candidates for Taipei and Taoyuan respectively, said that the proposal would reduce traffic and carbon emissions, while also better reflecting the reality of the shared metropolitan area of the four cities.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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