Taipei City’s YouBike public bicycle system will adopt a progressive pricing scheme and a new regulation barring users from renting bicycles from the same station within 15 minutes of returning them, in an effort to solve the frequently reported problems of bike shortages during peak hours.
Currently, YouBike members can use the bikes for free for the first 30 minutes and pay NT$10 for every subsequent 30 minutes.
The pricing system has created a loophole that sees some users returning their bicycle before the free period expires and then immediately rent the same bike or another one to avoid paying for the service.
The practice has resulted in a shortage of bikes at popular rental stops, particularly those next to busy MRT stations.
Under the new regulations, which are to take effect on Oct. 1, users would have to wait 15 minutes after returning a bike before they can rent from the same station, said the Taipei City Government’s Department of Transportation, which manages the bicycle sharing system.
“However, after considering the possibility that users might have to rent a different bike in the event that the first one is found to be malfunctioning, we will allow them a five-minute window to return it and take another one from the same station,” the department said.
The department said for the first four hours the rental fee would remain NT$10 per half hour, but it would rise to NT$20 between four and eight hours and then jump to NT$30 after that.
After the new pricing system takes effect, users who rent a bicycle for 48 consecutive hours will have to pay NT$3,430, compared with NT$950 under the current system.
According to statistics provided by the department, only 5,600 out of 1.12 million users rented a bike for more than four consecutive hours last month.
The city has established 108 YouBike rental stations and aims raise the number to 173 stations by the end of this year.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS