Walking into bowels of Taipei’s Mass Rapid Transit system for the first time can be a bewildering experience. The same can be said about the Taipei City Government’s highly ambitious Youbike bicycle sharing system. But once you’ve signed up, used the service once or twice and figured out where the stations are, Youbike is a breeze.
Since Youbike stations are popping up all over the city, the Taipei Times wanted to get some feedback from users. There are two ways to get started with Youbike — EasyCard or credit card. If you already have an EasyCard, simply go to the Web site (www.youbike.com.tw/home.php) and click on the member icon. After following the instructions in English or Chinese, an SMS is sent to your mobile phone for confirmation and you can head directly to any of the stations to use a Youbike. The first 30 minutes of every rental are free and every 30 minutes after that is NT$10.
On the road
Photos: Marcus Aurelius and Lindsey Leamen
Using a credit card should be even easier, since all riders have to do is go to a Youbike kiosk and flash the credit card (as long as it has a microchip) and pick a bicycle. However, the credit card service is only available at 31 out of the 41 stations (mostly in the Xinyi District, 信義), and this is only marked on the physical map, not the one on the Youbike Web site.
Kate Lin (林雅婷) learned about Youbike from her co-worker and now uses the service at least twice a week.
“I enjoy doing this because I don’t get much chance to exercise during the week,” Lin said. “Also, there’s only one bus I can take home, and sometimes I have to wait a long time for it. Riding Youbike [home from work] is faster than that.”
Photo: Marcus Aurelius and Lindsey Leamen
Lin isn’t completely satisfied, though. “The registration machine at the station nearest my house is always broken,” she said. “Also, one time I couldn’t find any vacant places to return the bike, so I could only wait there until someone came to rent another bike.”
Lindsey Leamen, who prefers using the bikes for longer trips, thinks the service could be improved by adding more stations in places that aren’t in the main areas of the city.
“I work in Neihu and would love to have the option of biking to work in nice weather, and then taking the MRT home if the weather turns bad, which is a common occurrence in Taipei.”
Convenient service
Overall, Leamen believes the service is convenient because it provides a list of stations, a real time listing of how many bikes are there at that particular time and how many empty spaces are available.
“The first time I used a bike, I borrowed it for three and a half hours and it only cost me NT$60. That’s amazing, especially considering there’s a similar bike share program in Toronto and for half the time I ended up getting charged the equivalent of NT$700. Oh, and I love the baskets!”
Alex Trup, an avid Youbike rider, thinks it has a lot of potential. “It is very well-priced and if you are a light user, you will rarely pay anything,” he said. “I even made it once from Taipei City Hall to Academia Sinica in Nangang within the free time.”
Youbike hasn’t expanded to where Trup lives yet, but he still believes the service will improve. “Taipei is a great city for cycling because it has plenty of paths, generally flat terrain, and on some days, gorgeous weather. YouBike will solidify Taipei’s position as one of the world’s greatest cities for cycling.”
1. Choose off hours to ride the bikes or be prepared to wait during the busiest times of the day.
2. Before choosing a bike, always make sure and check the tires and brakes. If there is anything wrong with a bike, adjust the seat so it’s facing backwards, so other riders will know not to take it and the Youbike repair crew will know to fix it when they come by. (Tips courtesy of: www.weviewtaiwan.com)
This week, the government announced that electricity prices would not be raised for the next six months. Taipower had proposed raising the rates a mere 0.07 percent. The reason given for the rejection of the new rate was that the tiny increase would not cover the administrative costs of making the adjustment. Moreover, Taipower is finally making money again after five years of no profits. Those of us who from time to time pay attention to the government’s decisions to subsidize utility prices were a bit bemused by this strange logic. Surely, it’s reasonable to suggest that if the rate hike
Over a million years in the making, the outdoor playground that is Kaohsiung’s Shoushan (壽山), commonly known as “Monkey Mountain,” is a rich geological and ecological resource that visitors to the city should be sure not to miss. Many are familiar with the area’s hiking trails and resident monkey population, but even locals may be surprised to learn of the extensive system of caves here, full of classic examples of speleothems like stalactites, stalagmites, draperies and flowstones, as well as cave-dwelling fauna. These caves are the result of hundreds of thousands of years of erosion slowly dissolving the mountain’s limestone.
It’s official: Trees are good for the mental health of city dwellers. According to a study published in Scientific Reports at the end of last year, individuals living within 100m of a high density of street trees in Leipzig, Germany, were prescribed antidepressant prescriptions at a lower rate than those who didn’t have many trees in their neighborhood. The study noted that more distant clusters of street trees didn’t appear to have any impact on antidepressant use, and that, even at 100m, the correlation was merely “marginally significant.” However, the researchers found, for individuals with low socio-economic status, trees no more
Chinese tech giants are expanding in Singapore as they face a crackdown at home and growing pressure in other key markets — but they may struggle to find talent in the city-state. Messaging-and-gaming behemoth Tencent is opening a hub and TikTok owner ByteDance is on a hiring spree after establishing a regional HQ, while e-commerce giant Alibaba is investing in property and recruiting. The tech firms are shifting their focus to booming Southeast Asian markets as authorities tighten the screws at home amid concerns about the platforms’ growing power. Regulators have launched a blitz on the sector, hitting several firms with heavy fines,
RSS