Effective today, Tinian Express will charge fees on Tinian-bound passengers from Saipan, instead of giving out complimentary tickets.<\/p>\n
The ferry company, however, would reduce the price of ferry tickets from Tinian to Saipan and implement a uniform pricing scheme for one-way tickets between the two islands. Tinian Shipping & Transportation, Inc., an affiliate company of Tinian Dynasty Hotel & Casino, operates Tinian Express.<\/p>\n
One-way ferry tickets now cost $15 each for adults and $7 each for children between ages one to four. Tinian Express\u2019 upper deck seats now cost $20 each. The ticket prices do not include the $2.25-passenger fees imposed by the Commonwealth Ports Authority.<\/p>\n
Tinian Express used to issue complimentary tickets to Tinian-bound passengers in at least the past two years. For passengers coming from Tinian to Saipan, an adult ticket used to cost $25.<\/p>\n
Tinian Dynasty president Tom Liu did not disclose the rationale behind its decision to start charging passenger fees for one-way tickets from Saipan to Tinian, but noted the high fuel prices. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe should charge for it. It\u2019s time to charge,\u201d Liu said. In November 2005, Liu disclosed that the ferry company had been losing approximately $3.5 million yearly.<\/p>\n
Another company, Bridge Investment Group, plans to construct a 300-room hotel and casino resort on Tinian. In December 2005, the Tinian Gaming Casino Control Commission granted that company a conditional license to begin its project, which is expected to cost over $100 million.<\/p>\n
Tinian Express\u2019 ferry services reduced traffic between Saipan and Tinian after one of its two vessels ran aground on a Tinian cliffline sometime last October. Since then, ferry services departing Saipan and Tinian went down from five each to two each daily.<\/p>\n
The only functional ferry right departs Tinian at 8am and 1pm daily; from Saipan, it departs for Tinian at 9:30am and 5pm. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, Tinian Express provides additional services\u2014the ferry departs Tinian at 1am and leaves Saipan at 3:30am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Effective today, Tinian Express will charge fees on Tinian-bound passengers from Saipan, instead of giving out complimentary tickets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}