Kaohsiung Underground Criticized for Long Waiting Period|高雄鐵路地下化增7車站班次少.班距長

發布時間：2018/10/19 16:33 更新時間：2018/10/19 17:29

Jake Chen

The new underground segment of the Taiwan railway in Kaohsiung have attracted a lot of visitors since it began operation four days ago. However, many have found that there are only a few trains passing through each station, and one has to wait for as much as 40 minutes for a train.

There are constantly passengers entering and leaving the new Kaohsiung station, now moved to under the ground. The station, along with seven other new ones, have attracted many tourists in the past few days. Some tour groups have even bought day passes in order to visit seven stations all together.

We need to wait for around 15 to 20 minutes to get on the train. We started at noon and have only visited four stations so far (at slightly past 2pm): Kaohsiung, Fengshan, New Zuoying, and this station.

It takes only a few minutes to walk around each station. However, it took the public more than 2 hours to tour four stations. This is due to the number of trains running through the seven new stations being relatively small. In some stations, the longest interval is 40 minutes between two trains. Even at peak hours, there are at most four to five trains per hour. The members of the public acknowledged the added convenience of the new stations, but at the same time, many are also concerned about the service not reaching its full potential due to lack of trains.

It certainly is convenient (if there are more trains). Maybe it's because not many people would need to ride the train in the Kaohsiung area.

The number of trains are low, but I think I can adjust my own schedule to that of the train station. It's not a problem.

Some stations only see very few passengers at nonpeak hours, and no vender has occupied the shops in the stations. The local government is hoping that the station will be fully prepared to welcome incoming waves of passengers and tourists. The Taiwan Railway Administration said that it is still collecting data on the number of passengers through the station. The administration said it will filter out the tourists with one-day passes and adjust the train schedules based on the actual number of passengers.