| Summary |
The Institute of Transportation, upon the instruction of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, drew the highway public transportation plan to apply for project funding from the Executive Yuan to increase the financial resources for the development of highway public transportation as promoted by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and county/city governments.
Throughout the three implementations of the plans, the continuous decline in the ridership of city buses and highway buses was successfully reversed with a growth rate of 20.3% from 2009 to 2018, a new high in recent years which brought the bus transit market back to the good old days of 1996. However, in 2019, there was a slight decline of 0.22% in the ridership of city buses and highway buses. This study hence, through relevant analysis, attempts to clarify the possible reasons for the decline in ridership.
In 2020, the ridership of city buses and highway buses experienced a greater decline of 13.49% as compared to 2019 which was evidently due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. This study further analyzes whether there are significant differences in the impact different modes of public transportation experienced over different time periods, different regions, and different countries to understand which factors affected the extent of impact on ridership during the pandemic, and which factors could the transportation sector control or focus on. This study also discusses the measures adopted by foreign public transportation sectors (operators and competent authorities) during the pandemic to mitigate the loss of passengers or increase ridership, and proposes disaster mitigation
and profit-making measures which Taiwan’s public transportation sector can adopt in response to the impact from the pandemic. |
