The Taipei City Government is to expand the YouBike 2.0 system, an upgraded version of the public bicycle rental service, to 1,200 stations by the end of next year, it said on Thursday.
The upgraded system, which was launched in May, has more than 800 rental stations, surpassing the city’s target of 750 by the end of the year, Taipei Department of Transportation division head Liao Yuan-ling (廖苑伶) said.
The service’s daily users reached a high of more than 120,000 last month, with a daily average of 94,000 users, the highest among all such services in Taiwan.
Photo: CNA
After the installation of 1,200 bike-share stations, the density of stations in the city would be the highest nationwide, meaning that there would be one station every 150m to 200m on average, the city government said.
City officials also said that Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) monthly pass holders would be eligible for a discount when renting an electric motorbike from a scheme launched earlier this year in conjunction with electric motorbike operators WeMo Scooter, iRent and GoShare.
Holders of the NT$1,280 monthly pass, which covers unlimited rides on MRT trains and public buses in Taipei and New Taipei City, can rent scooters from the three operators at special rates, using the EasyWallet mobile payment service.
WeMo Scooter, iRent and GoShare have rolled out packages priced at NT$300, NT$259 and NT$299 respectively for MRT monthly pass holders to rent scooters for a limited time, the city government said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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