Crowd control is in place on High Speed Rail (HSR) services until Wednesday to ensure safe and orderly travel before and after the Double Ten National Day holiday weekend, Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) said yesterday.
Following a major travel surge during the recent Mid-Autumn Festival, when many passengers at the HSR Taichung Station lined up for more than two hours to get a non-reserved seat, the new system aims to help people plan their travel more easily, THSRC said.
There is color-coded travel advice on the company’s homepage, with green, yellow and red indicating wait times of “normal,” “more than 30 minutes” and “more than 60 minutes” respectively, the company said.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Passengers using the T Express app would also receive push notifications regarding congestion levels at all 12 stations across the country, THSRC said.
RECORD NUMBER
The bullet train service saw a record number of passengers on the last day of the Mid-Autumn Festival weekend, with the northbound travelers reaching 338,000, the company said.
Photo: Huang Hsu-lei, Taipei Times
The second-highest number of passengers since the HSR began operations in 2007 was on Sept. 15, 2019, just after the Mid-Autumn Festival had ended when 318,000 people traveled, it said.
To help prevent congestion, THSRC is operating 190 extra trains from yesterday to Wednesday, bringing the total service number to 1,057, the company said.
The THSRC advised people to avoid peak travel times — 8am to 11am today for southbound trips and 1pm to 8pm on Tuesday for northbound trips.
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