Four-month ridership on Taipei MRT exceeds 2m

Staff writer, with CNA





The average daily ridership on Taipei’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system in the first four months of the year exceeded 2 million people, according to Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) data.

Following the extension of the MRT network, 2.01 million passengers per day used the system from January to April, up 3.4 percent from the same period of last year, data showed.

The figure for the same period was fewer than 2 million from 2011 to last year, according to the data.

The data also showed that the Taiwan High Speed Rail benefited from this year’s Lantern Festival, a two-week event that was held in Taoyuan from Feb. 22 to March 6 and attracted more than 10 million visitors.

The average daily ridership on the high-speed rail system rose 12.7 percent from a year earlier to 155,000 in the first four months of year, the data showed.

In addition, high-speed rail ridership was boosted by the opening of three new stations — Miaoli, Changhua and Yunlin — in December last year, the DGBAS said.

However, average daily ridership on Taiwan Railways declined 2.5 percent year-on-year to 630,000, while the number of passengers on the Kaohsiung MRT system fell 1.4 percent to 167,000, the data showed.

The combined daily average ridership of Taipei and Kaohsiung’s MRT systems, Taiwan Railways and the high-speed rail in the four-month period showed a 2.2 percent increase from the previous year.

Meanwhile, domestic fuel prices fell 14.4 percent in the first four months of the year from a year earlier, reflecting a 38.6 percent decline in global crude oil prices, the data showed.

With the drop in domestic fuel prices, sales of gasoline and diesel in Taiwan rose 2.8 percent year-on-year in the four-month period, and the number of passenger cars using the nation’s highway network rose 5.4 percent year-on-year, the data showed.