Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow- yen (盧秀燕) on Friday announced the city’s plan to offer residents a NT$299 (US$9.75) monthly public transport pass from June as part of a central government project to subsidize public transport.
The pass, which is to cost NT$599 for non-residents, would allow unlimited travel on public transport in Taichung, including city buses, rented bicycles and mass rapid transit (MRT) lines, Lu said.
Also available would be an intercity travel pass, which costs NT$699 for Taichung residents and NT$999 for non-residents, she said.
Photo: Su Meng-chuan, Taipei Times
The intercity travel pass would allow unlimited travel on public transport across Taichung and neighboring Changhua, Nantou and Miaoli counties, covering local city/intercity buses, MRT lines, Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) trains and bicycle-sharing services.
The Taichung City government said it is also working to expand the area covered by intercity travel services by encouraging the participation of other local governments, such as Hsinchu city and county, Yunlin County and Chiayi City.
The central government project to promote public transport, which includes similar fare subsidies in northern and southern Taiwan, is part of the Cabinet’s disbursement of a NT$380 billion tax surplus last year, but still needs to be approved by the legislature.
The Kaohsiung City Government has said it plans to introduce next month a NT$399 monthly public transport pass for unlimited travel on the Kaohsiung MRT, light rail, city buses, ferries and bicycle-sharing service.
Kaohsiung, Tainan and Pingtung County are also looking to introduce a joint NT$999 monthly pass that would allow unlimited travel between the three destinations via TRA trains and intercity buses.
A NT$1,200 monthly public transport pass serving Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan and Keelung is also likely to be introduced in July, providing unlimited travel on the Taipei and Taoyuan MRT, city buses, bicycles and TRA.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching