A nonprofit organization dedicated to the nation’s railway development on Saturday urged the government to clearly state its plans to reform the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA).
The Cabinet has signaled its intention to reform the 73-year-old TRA following the derailment of Taroko Express No. 408 on April 2, which killed 49 people, but its vision for the agency has been vague, the Society of Railway and National Planning said in a statement.
The TRA has over the past 20 years boasted of the ways it would expand services, but that has only meant that it essentially operates as a different entity from the one it intends to be, the group said.
Photo: Wang Chun-chi, Taipei Times
It pointed to a TRA project to transform part of its services into an “urban subway” by building more stations and adding more frequent lines in metropolitan areas, the organization said.
The program has received mostly negative feedback due to the limited potential to upgrade TRA infrastructure, including the lack of trains needed for intensive subway-like operations, it said.
There are also concerns over the management and scheduling of fast, long-distance trains and slower, local trains operating on limited track space, which could result in more delays, it added.
The government must outline which acts and regulations would be amended or created to transform the TRA, the group said.
It must first decide whether a new TRA should be covered by the Company Act (公司法) or the Administrative Act of State-owned Enterprises (國營事業管理法), or continue operating under the Statute of Organization for Taiwan Railroad Administration Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communications (交通部臺灣鐵路管理局組織條例), it said.
Only when the rules are identified can there be a sustainable structure under which employment, salaries and other administrative issues can be finalized, it added.
A successful transformation of the TRA depends on consensus between labor and management, the organization said.
The group’s statement follows comments from Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成), who on Friday said the government favors “enterprization” for the TRA instead of corporatization or privatization.
“What we would like to emphasize on TRA reforms is its ‘enterprization’ and sustainable operations. Use of the more conventional ‘corporatization’ could lead to people misunderstanding it as ‘privatization,’” he said.
Lo did not elaborate on the meaning of the terms as it would apply to the TRA, but said that the government would first adjust the agency’s internal structure to improve safety and fix financial issues before “more business model options can be put on the table.”
The TRA has accrued NT$400 billion (US$14.1 billion) in debt.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has said that the solution to the TRA’s problems lies in corporatization, and various plans have been made to meet that goal.
Meanwhile, the Hualien District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday revised the death toll of April 2’s train crash from 50 to 49 following DNA testing and matching.
All bodies have been identified and death certificates issued, the office said.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
The 2025 Kaohsiung Wonderland–Winter Amusement Park event has teamed up with the Japanese manga series Chiikawa this year for its opening at Love River Bay yesterday, attracting more than 10,000 visitors, the city government said. Following the success of the “2024 Kaohsiung Wonderland” collaboration with a giant inflatable yellow duck installation designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this year the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau collaborated with Chiikawa by Japanese illustrator Nagano to present two giant inflatable characters. Two inflatable floats — the main character, Chiikwa, a white bear-like creature with round ears, and Hachiware, a white cat with a blue-tipped tail
RSS