The public bike rental service YouBike was temporarily suspended in six cities and counties in northern and central Taiwan yesterday morning due to software damage during a system update, but the service was expected to resume normal operations within two days, YouBike spokesperson Liu Li-chu (劉麗珠) said.
Liu said that the system went down at 1:30am when an update of the remote-control system of the parking slots failed.
The system breakdown has resulted in the malfunction of 17,317 parking slots in Taipei, New Taipei City, Hsinchu, Taoyuan, Taichung and Changhua, and affected 140,000 people, including 100,000 to 110,000 users in the greater Taipei area, Liu said.
Photo: Kuo Yi, Taipei Times
Liu said that the company has informed the public transportation departments of the cities and counties and sent engineers to YouBike parking lots around the nation to repair the control system.
The service in Taichung and Changhua is expected to resume sooner than others, Liu added.
The glitch is estimated to have caused at least NT$1 million (US$31,530) in financial losses in Taipei and New Taipei City.
Soon after the system went down, the company’s management urged users to take other forms of transportation to get to their destinations.
The large-scale breakdown is unprecedented in the history of the public bike rental system, which was formally launched in Taipei in November 2012 and was expanded to New Taipei City at the end of 2013, to Taichung and Changhua in 2014 and then to Taoyuan and Hsinchu this year.
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