Xinyi District’s (信義) public rental bike system has seen a rapid increase in membership numbers this month as well as a 30 percent increase in usage rate, after the introduction of a discount scheme that involves 30 minutes of free time, according to the Taipei City Government’s Bureau of Transportation.
The system had been promoted as an alternative transit system for Taipei City residents in the face of rising gasoline prices.
According to department official Shen Hui-hung (沈慧虹), the department’s partner in the Youbike system, Giant, first implemented the discount scheme at the beginning of this month.
Photo: Tsai Wei-chi, Taipei Times
“With the system in place for three weeks, we have already seen an increase of Youbike usage by 30 percent and a weekly usage rate of 1,329 people,” Shen said, adding that hundreds of people register for the system each day.
Shen said the Youbike system is planning to increase the number of locations from 11 to 162 within three years, giving it a fleet of 5,300 bikes for rent and extending its service to cover the whole city.
Thirty new locations have already finished installing hardware and are planned to be available to residents by the end of the month, Shen said.
Once these 30 additional locations are in service, there would be approximately 1,500 bikes available to Taipei residents, she added.
Members of the Youbike system are be granted the first 30 minutes free, even if they are in the service area of the soon-to-be-made-available 30 stations, Shen said.
Meanwhile, as part of a promotional campaign in accordance with the city government’s planned “World Car Free Day” on Sept. 22, the department said it is offering the person who uses the Youbike system, the MRT system and the city’s bus system most often a prize of an EasyCard with a preloaded value of NT$10,000.
Although the promotional campaign is entering its final two week period — it lasts through this month — official records posted on the Youbike Facebook page show that the leading person has only logged on to the Youbike service 32 times. Hence, a close call would not be impossible.
However, the department has said that each usage of the Youbuke service must be at least 5 minutes or longer and a bike cannot be rented at the same location twice.
Participants of the event must first register at the official event Web site (www.2012taipeicarfreeday.com.tw/find), the department said.
Should there be a tie for first place, the prize would be awarded to the participant who registered first, the department said.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS