Friday, January 30, 2015

Taiwan public transportation budget raised to new high

WantChinaTimes: "The ministry anticipates that it will not be easy to achieve a government goal of a 30% public transportation market share by 2025, Lin said.

The ministry hopes that local governments, particularly those of the six special municipalities–Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung–can do more to encourage people to use public transport, he said.

The 2015 budget will be spent on the subsidization of public bus operations in remote areas and measures to replace old buses and taxis with new ones and promote a multipurpose ticket card system for public bus and railway services, according to the ministry."

Monday, January 26, 2015

Hong Kong cars take up too much space, move too few people

South China Morning Post: "The increasing use of private cars inevitably uses up limited road resources. According to the traffic congestion report, private cars account for 40 to 70 per cent of the total traffic on most of the main roads, but carry only 16 per cent of the total daily number of road-based travellers, or "passenger boardings".

Minibuses and buses, by contrast, carry 71 per cent of total daily road-based passenger boardings, but account for only 5 to 25 per cent of total traffic on major roads."


Thursday, January 1, 2015

In Taiwan, cars are still winning the war for government subsidy

Taipei Times: "The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that local governments should make public transport development the top priority in their transportation policies, adding that it could ask local governments to refund subsidies granted to them if a transport facility is underused or demolished because of inadequate evaluation in its planning."