Taiwan High-Speed Rail or Conventional Trains: How to Plan Your Transfers

Taiwan has two railways down its west coast, and most first-time plans pick one and stick with it. That is the mistake. The high-speed line (THSR) runs Taipei to Kaohsiung in about an hour and a half, but eight of its twelve stations sit outside the cities they are named after, and the conventional railway (TRA) stops in every city centre but takes two to three times as long on the long legs. The right answer changes from leg to leg, and it is decided by one habit: count the journey from your hotel door to the next hotel door, not from platform to platform.

For the classic route the verdicts are these. Taipei to Taichung: high-speed, because it saves an hour even after the local link into town. Taichung to Tainan: high-speed on an early-bird ticket, though the conventional express is close enough to win if the discount is gone or you have heavy bags. Tainan to Kaohsiung: the conventional express, every time, because it runs centre to centre in 30 to 45 minutes while the high-speed line needs two connections for a 12-minute ride. Tainan to Taoyuan airport: high-speed to the Taoyuan HSR station, not to Taipei. And the THSR passes do not pay for this route. The method and the numbers behind each verdict follow, checked against the operators' own timetables for a November weekday.

The two systems in one table

The method in five steps

1. Start from your hotel door

Add the last mile to every high-speed leg before you compare anything. At HSR Taichung you walk a corridor from the second floor to TRA Xinwuri and ride one stop to Taichung station: 11 to 14 minutes, NT$22, with 59 local trains a day. At HSR Tainan you walk to Shalun station and ride the Shalun line into Tainan: 21 to 25 minutes, NT$37, and only about twice an hour, so budget a wait. At Zuoying you are already on the Kaohsiung metro. At Taipei Main the high-speed platforms share the station with the metro and TRA. A conventional express, by contrast, leaves you on a platform in the middle of town.

2. Count the trains you can actually catch

Frequency is where the high-speed line quietly wins. On the reference weekday there were trains from Taipei to Taichung every ten to twenty minutes all morning (07:31, 07:36, 07:46, 07:51, 08:01, 08:11, 08:21, 08:31 and so on), and the fastest of them, the ones that skip stations, did it in 47 minutes; the stopping trains took 60 to 66. Conventional expresses run about every half hour and vary a lot: Puyuma trains do Taipei to Taichung in 99 to 111 minutes, the older Tze-Chiang in up to 163. If your plan depends on a particular departure, the conventional train needs a reservation; the high-speed train just needs you to turn up.

3. Price the early bird

THSR sells a limited number of seats on each train at 35, 20 or 10 percent off the standard fare, one-way adult standard-car tickets only, bookable online, in the T Express app or at partner convenience stores until five days before travel; the 35 percent tier sells first and some peak trains have none. The ticket carries your passport digits and is not transferable. Because booking for a date opens 29 days ahead, the realistic window is between 29 and 5 days before travel, and the cheapest tier is usually gone within days on popular morning trains. If you miss it, a non-reserved ticket (cars 10 to 12 on most trains) costs a few percent less than a reserved seat and is sold on the day.

4. Decide how much flexibility you need

Early-bird tickets are for a named train; change your plans and you are back to full fare. The conventional railway's 28-day booking is also train-specific, and its express trains can sell out at busy times, while the high-speed line's non-reserved cars never do. If you cannot fix a departure time, the high-speed line's non-reserved ticket is the flexible option; if you can, the early bird is the cheap one.

5. Weigh luggage and where you sleep

Two extra connections with a suitcase cost more than the timetable shows. If your hotels are near the TRA stations, which is where you want them in Taichung and Tainan, the conventional express on the Taichung to Tainan leg is a single seat from one city centre to the other, and that convenience is worth about 15 minutes to most people. If you are travelling light, the high-speed link is painless.

The worked legs

All times are from the operators' timetables: THSR for Tuesday 13 October 2026, the latest weekday published when we checked (booking and the timetable for a date open 29 days ahead, and the pattern is stable between timetable periods), and TRA for Tuesday 10 November 2026. Door-to-door estimates add the local links and a realistic wait; they are estimates, not timetables.

Taipei to Taichung

The 47-minute high-speed trains left Taipei at 07:31, 07:51, 08:31 and 09:31 on the reference weekday; the 60-minute ones every ten minutes in between. Add 12 minutes for the local train into town and a ten-minute wait, and you are at Taichung station about 1 hour 20 minutes after leaving Taipei Main, for NT$700 or NT$455 to 630 as an early bird. The best conventional train, a Puyuma, takes 99 minutes and costs NT$500, but there are only three of them a day and the ordinary Tze-Chiang runs are 109 to 163 minutes. The high-speed line wins on time by about an hour and loses on price by NT$200 at full fare, or wins by NT$45 at the deepest discount.

Taichung to Tainan

This is the close one. The high-speed train takes 36 to 54 minutes (08:48 to 09:32 and 09:25 to 10:06 on the reference weekday), but it starts with the Xinwuri link and ends with the Shalun line, which runs about twice an hour, so a realistic door-to-door time is 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours. The conventional Tze-Chiang takes 99 to 134 minutes from Taichung station to Tainan station with no connections, for NT$487. On price, the high-speed leg at full fare is NT$650 plus NT$59 of links, against NT$487; at the 35 percent early bird it is NT$420 plus NT$59, or NT$479, which is level with the conventional train. So: book the early bird and take the high-speed train for its frequency, or take the conventional express if the discount is gone or your bags are heavy. Either way you arrive within a quarter of an hour of the other.

Tainan to Kaohsiung

The high-speed hop from Tainan to Zuoying takes 11 to 13 minutes, which sounds decisive until you add the 21 to 25 minute Shalun line at one end and the metro at the other; door to door it is about an hour and three tickets. The conventional express does Tainan station to Kaohsiung station in 30 to 45 minutes for NT$158, with departures at 07:47, 08:29 and 08:49 on our reference morning and about 30 a day, and the local train does it in an hour for NT$102 on the EasyCard. Take the conventional train.

Taipei to Tainan direct

For a seven-day trip that skips Taichung, the high-speed train takes 82 to 120 minutes plus the Shalun link, for NT$1,350 or NT$875 as an early bird; the conventional express takes 211 to 281 minutes for NT$891. The high-speed line wins by two hours and, on the early bird, costs less.

Tainan to Taoyuan airport

Do not ride to Taipei and back out. High-speed trains that stop at Taoyuan HSR station take 83 to 101 minutes from Tainan (the 07:48 arrived at 09:11 and the 08:48 at 10:11 on the reference weekday), for NT$1,190; from Taoyuan HSR the Airport MRT commuter train reaches the terminals in about 20 minutes for NT$35. With the Shalun link at the start and waits at each change, allow three hours from a Tainan hotel to the check-in desk. The same logic applies from Kaohsiung: 96 to 115 minutes from Zuoying to Taoyuan on the trains that stop there.

Taipei to Kaohsiung

If you skip the middle of the island altogether, the high-speed train reaches Zuoying in 94 to 134 minutes for NT$1,490, or NT$965 as an early bird, and the metro takes you into the centre. The conventional express takes at least four hours for NT$994. No contest.

The pass break-even, worked for this route

The THSR passes are sold to foreign passport holders only: the 3-Day Pass at NT$2,200 for unlimited standard-car travel on three consecutive days, and the Flexible 2-Day Pass at NT$2,500 for any two days within seven. Seats are reserved free of charge before boarding. Here is what they are up against on the ten-day route, which rides the high-speed line on Day 5 (Taipei to Taichung), Day 7 (Taichung to Tainan) and Day 10 (Tainan to Taoyuan).

The Flexible 2-Day Pass costs NT$2,500 and the two most expensive legs it could cover cost NT$1,840 at full fare, so it loses before you have bought the third ticket. The 3-Day Pass only works if you ride on three consecutive days, which means compressing the trip into a hop-a-day pattern nobody should follow. Three early-bird tickets at any tier beat both passes, and even three foreign one-way tickets at 15 percent off, which you can buy when the early birds are gone, come in at about NT$2,160, still under the passes.

When does a pass pay? When you ride a lot in a short time: a Taipei to Kaohsiung return within three consecutive days costs NT$2,980 at full fare against the NT$2,200 pass, and a Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, Taipei loop on three straight days costs NT$2,700. Early birds beat the pass even then (NT$1,930 for the Kaohsiung return at the 35 percent tier), so the honest summary is that the passes buy flexibility for people who will not book ahead, not savings for people who will.

Booking rules that change the answer

High-speed. Booking for a date opens 29 days ahead, extended to the following Sunday when that day is a Friday or Saturday, and closes an hour before departure; a November trip therefore cannot be booked in September, so set a reminder. Payment and collection work online, in the T Express app, at station windows and machines or at partner convenience stores, with the ID number used for booking and the reservation number; VISA, MasterCard, JCB, American Express and UnionPay are accepted. Early birds close five days before travel. Non-reserved tickets are sold only on the day and are valid on any train that day. Children under 12 and at least 115 cm tall pay half; smaller children travel free without a seat. Business class costs almost double for a wider seat.

Conventional. Express reservations open at midnight 28 days before travel, on the TRA e-booking website or app, and close an hour before departure. Puyuma, Taroko and other designated all-reserved trains sell no standing tickets, and boarding one with only a stored-value card is treated as travelling without a ticket, with a 50 percent surcharge. Some EMU3000 services carry a non-reserved car (car 9 on the trains we checked) and others sell no standing room at all, so read the note on the timetable. TRA also warns that it fine-tunes timetables and suggests checking again a week before you travel.

The station problem, station by station

The Taoyuan station is the exception that helps rather than hurts: it sits on the Airport MRT, about 20 minutes from the terminals, which turns the high-speed line into an airport express for the whole west coast. Landing at Taoyuan and heading south first, you can be in Taichung 30 to 41 minutes after boarding at Taoyuan HSR for NT$540, without touching Taipei.

Money and cards

At the Bank of Taiwan's rates on 21 September 2026, NT$700 was about US$22 or 19 euros, and the whole route's high-speed legs at the deepest early-bird tier, NT$1,645, came to about US$52. An EasyCard or iPASS from the airport MRT station pays for every metro, city bus, the Sun Moon Lake shuttle and every local train on this route; buy it on arrival and keep the long-distance tickets separate. The high-speed booking site and app take VISA, MasterCard, JCB, American Express and UnionPay, and tickets are collected at station windows, machines or convenience stores with the ID number used for booking and the reservation number. For where these legs sit in a full ten-day plan, see the 10-day itinerary; for the southern base decision that determines the last leg, Tainan or Kaohsiung; and for the weather that shapes the whole route, Taiwan in November.

Photo credits

Hero: a Taiwan Railway EMU3000 express at Kaohsiung station, by 4300streetcar, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Taichung HSR station platform and the THSR 700T at Taipei Main Station by 4300streetcar, CC BY 4.0. All via Wikimedia Commons, resized.