How to book a TRA ticket

The regular railway is looser than THSR: no reservation needed on local trains at all, a phone-app booking flow, and convenience stores doing double duty as ticket offices. Here's the working procedure.

1. Where you can buy

The official TRA website
The 「台鐵e訂通」 app — Taiwan Railway e-booking, iOS App Store id1441617748 / Android package tw.gov.tra.twtraffic; covers booking, payment, changes, refunds and the e-ticket itself
Station ticket windows
Multifunction ticket machines
Convenience stores (the four big chains)
Phone booking

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2. The booking window and limits

Reservations open 28 days (four weeks) ahead. Book on a Friday and the window extends through the following Sunday. Same-day tickets stay on sale until 30 min before departure. Limits: 9 tickets per ID per travel date, or 18 for a simultaneous round trip.

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Foreign passports are accepted as the booking ID. Holiday periods run on their own calendar — 2026 Lunar New Year tickets, for example, opened at midnight on 13 January (east line) and 14 January (west line) per TRA's published annual schedule.

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3. Pay or lose it

Pay or pick up by 24:00 of the day after booking — for day-of-travel bookings, 20 minutes before departure. Miss it three times in a month and the booking account is suspended.

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4. Reserved or not: the train-type split

Train	Reservation	Payment
區間車 / 區間快 (local / local express)	None — just tap in with an IC card	EasyCard / iPASS / icash 2.0 at local fares
自強 Tze-Chiang — incl. EMU3000, 普悠瑪, 太魯閣	Reserved (EMU3000 is all-reserved)	Ticket; PP push-pull sets also accept IC/non-reserved

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Watch the IC-card exclusion list before tapping in — riding an excluded train on a card costs the back fare plus 50%. Details in the FAQ.

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5. Discounts worth knowing

University students: 50/70/80% off designated reserved trains on journeys of 50 km or more, valid 2026-08-17 → 2027-08-16. ROC student ID required.
Diesel 柴聯自強 services carry a 3% (97折) discount Mondays to Thursdays.
Child / senior / disabled concessions and IC concession cards — half price, with eligibility rules — are covered on the ticket-types page.

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Ticket windows at TRA Taipei Station — Station ticket windows — one of six TRA purchase channels.

Then compare it with THSR

Fares, times and the per-corridor verdicts are side by side in the fare finder, and the tradeoffs are unpacked in THSR vs TRA.