The Highway Bureau yesterday said it does not have a backup plan for when local governments run out of funding for the TPass program at the end of this month.
Funding for Phase 1 of the TPass program expired last month and the government has been barred from accessing the remaining funds.
For Phase 2, the bureau has budgeted NT$36.38 billion (US$1.15 billion) to cover expenditures from this year to 2029.
Photo: Hung Jui-chin, Taipei Times
However, the budget cannot be appropriated, as the legislature has yet to review the budget plan for this year.
The budget allocated for the TPass program this year is NT$7.52 billion.
“People continue to use TPass, which is being funded by revenue from sales of the monthly passes and contributions by local governments,” Highway Bureau Director-General Lin Fu-shan (林福山) said.
The central government should be covering 90 percent of funding for the program in the six special municipalities, as those regions have large concentrations of commuters, as it should for reimbursement for freeway bus operators and Taiwan Railway Corp, Lin said.
More than half of the funding is to subsidize TPass use in Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan, he said.
“We basically have no backup plan at this point. So far, we can only count on budget plans approved by city and county councils to sustain the program,” he said.
“Many local governments have told us they would have problems funding the program after this month,” he added.
On top of the inconvenience to commuters, bus service operators participating in the program would face a decline in revenue, Lin said.
The central government rolled out the TPass 2.0 program last month, with bus operators expected to get a boost in revenue from it, he said.
Starting this month, people aged 70 or older would receive a rebate of up to NT$1,500 if they voluntarily give up their drivers license and use TPass-valid services, he said, adding that the government also planned to allow mobile payment methods to purchase TPasses.
None of the new policies would be implemented if the budget is not approved by the legislature, he said.
There are about 698,000 monthly TPass users and about 379,000 use the TPass’ frequent rider program, bureau data showed.
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