The Taipei City Government is to expand the network of its public bike rental system — YouBike — to Nangang (南港) and Da-an (大安) districts and is to launch five rental stops in the districts today amid the bicycles’ continually increasing popularity.
As the city government and its partner in the bicycle program, Giant Bicycles, celebrate the scheme’s one-millionth ride, Taipei’s Department of Transportation is to establish five rental stops today at Lingyun Market, Nangang Elementary School, Nangang Software Park, and the Mass Rapid Transit System’s (MRT) Houshanpia and Gongguan stations as part of its plan to set up 162 stops across the city by next year.
Currently, there are 41 rental stops at stations along the MRT’s Bannan, Wenhu and Luzhou lines, 11 of which are in Xinyi District (信義). The most-used stops are at Taipei City Hall and Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall MRT stations, as well as at National Taiwan Normal University, the department said.
Photo: Weng Yu-huang, Taipei Times
The department has obtained a NT$18 million (US$619,000) anti-air pollution subsidy from the Environmental Protection Administration thanks to the system’s popularity.
Liu Chia-you (劉嘉祐), a division chief at the department, said that since an increasing amount of people are using the YouBikes, the department has decided to extend the free 30-minute rental promotion through to the end of next year for all YouBike members.
YouBike members can use the bikes for free for the first 30 minutes, while non-members pay NT$10 for every 30 minutes.
Wu Chin-wei (吳晉瑋), a specialist at YouBike, said users must show identification and EasyCards in order to apply for membership. Application forms are available on YouBike’s Web site or at its service center next to the Taipei City Hall MRT station. Non-members can use a credit card or mobile phone to rent the bicycles.
Taipei launched the bike rental program in 2009 with 11 rental sites in Xinyi District offering 500 bicycles for public use. The city government budgets NT$14 million annually to continue extending the service to cover the entire city and its ultimate goal is to have 5,300 bikes ready to rent by the end of next year.
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
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.
RSS