Notes from Taiwan: First impressions of Taipei's impressive, user-friendly transit system

Typical entrance to a Taipei Metro station.

Yesterday, I touched town in Taipei, Taiwan as part of a week-long visit to study the country’s public transportation systems and understand relevant lessons for California and North America. Documenting and communicating practices from other places with excellent transit can be a powerful way of advancing change. Seamless Bay Area has had some success in the past in advancing the adoption of global best practices by promoting knowledge exchange between Californian transit officials and Swiss and Swedish experts.

I’ve been lucky enough have this opportunity because of the Wendy Tao Smart Cities Scholarship and ITS California, which provides a travel fellowship each year for a project related to sustainable transport and smart cities that can bring international experience to California. As part of my scholarship, in addition to visiting Taiwan, I’ll also be visiting Korea in March of next year.

While over the next week, I’ll be meeting with various Taiwanese experts, I wanted to spend my first day here simply experiencing transit myself and documenting what it’s like as a new user. I think it’s important to remember what’s easy and what’s difficult so that we can channel that empathy to design more user-friendly, accessible transit. What follows is a summary of my first eight hours in Taipei - a mostly excellent experience, with many relevant lessons for North American systems seeking to make transit more approachable.

The Airport MRT Station is directly beneath the main arrivals hall, making for extremely easy access.

Arriving at the Airport and the Taoyuan Metro

Arriving at the main international airport in Taipei, promotion of public transit is so prominent it would almost be hard not to take it. Before you even go through passport control, there are kiosks selling high speed rail and metro tickets. Exiting, signs with a train icon and “MRT” can’t be missed.

Following the clear signs, I arrive at the Taoyuan Metro (MRT), a high speed connection to Taipei directly under the main terminal, welcomed by one of the largest font sizes I have ever seen – you literally cannot miss it! Also, everything is purple.

This makes me realize that it’s really a major ‘red flag’ when, as is often the case in many North American cities, airport wayfinding makes public transit hard to find. It’s a huge turnoff and makes you think, “if it’s this hard to figure out how to take transit from the airport, maybe this city doesn’t have good public transit.”

As I approach the entrance, I see a sign saying I can pay with my credit card at the fare gates, so I march right up and tap – and the gates open! No machines, no decisions to make. Super clear signage in the train, clear announcements – clearly this is a new service.

The Taipei Metro and fare product decisions

Later on, I decide to explore the Taipei Metro, which is a different agency from the Taoyuan Metro, which I took from the airport. From what I can tell, the greater Taipei region includes four major municipalities which each have their own public transit agencies: Taipei, New Taipei, Keelung, and Taoyuan. I’m sure I’ll be learning more about this during my visit, but as a user, at least between Taoyuan Metro and Taipei metro, all the wayfinding appears to be consistent. I wonder how this is coordinated and regulated - how does network management work in the Taipei region?

Taipei Metro requires me to buy a card or token to ride – my credit card won’t open the fare gates. I am faced with at least 4 different machines, and I spend about 5-10 minutes examining each one to figure out what I should do considering I’m going to be in Taipei for 4 days.

There’s a 72hr pass but it’s only for the Taipei Metro – and I’m pretty sure I’ll want to take some buses and travel outside the city of Taipei. The “MegaCity” pass sounds perfect – it works across the region, on all modes, and includes free bike share, but it’s for 30 days only.

So..there’s TPass? EasyCard? It’s not clear what it what, and which is right for me, as English info is limited – after agonizing, I finally go to the visitor information booth and ask for advice. Turns out EasyCard is what I need, and I can load cash onto it.

With that out of the way, I rode around several metro lines and found it very easy to navigate. The wayfinding is excellent and logical – the lines have both a color and name, and the direction you are going in is clearly indicated by the terminal station and the color of the line. Line diagrams, system maps, and floor plan maps are everywhere.

Interestingly the station exits have huge numbers on the outside - those exit numbers are probably the most prominent thing you notice from outside the station. I find this interesting in contrast to the Bay Area where exit numbers aren't really known or promoted.

For fun, I checked out the Maokong gondola line, which brings sightseers around Taipei Zoo, and is shown on the overall system map for Taipei Metro. It was easy to find, and they also accept EasyCard. Amazing views!

Trying out a Taipei Bus

To get back to my hotel from Taipei Zoo, Google Maps told me that the fastest way was a bus, something called the “Roosevelt Rd., Main Line”. The stop was easy to find, but I was a bit confused because most of the bus lines seemed to be numbered, but my Google instructions did not have a number.

Screenshot from Google maps trip journey query - no number for the bus I’m supposed to take.

Looking at the different timetables posted at the bus stops, I did see a timetable for a bus with no number, called “Roosevelt Rd. Metro Bus”, and with a four-pointed multi-colored star symbol. However, beyond the name of the line, there was little English information.

A bus pulls up with a four pointed star! I thought, “That must be my bus!” I hopped on and tapped my EasyCard. Once on though, I look at one of the interior signs, and saw a timetable with a different route name, "Dunhua Metro Bus". I panicked and got off at the next stop.

I got lucky and found a very friendly local who spoke a little English on the sidewalk. Turns out there were two different four-pointed star routes that served these stops, and the Roosevelt Rd. bus also stops at this next stop I got off at. Within a few minutes, another four-pointed star bus pulls up, and this time I see the text “Roosevelt Rd.” flash on rotating display.

The bus was an extremely pleasant way to get back – far less crowded than the metro, good views, & it zoomed along in dedicated lanes. I deduced that this must be one of the higher-frequency “BRT” type lines in Taipei, which is perhaps why they don’t use numbers.

Plenty of digital screens on board the bus, including clear audible announcements in multiple languages.

The line diagram helpfully indicated that the frequencies are every 4-6 minutes in peak, 5-10 minutes in the off peak, and every 10-15 minutes on the weekend. However, the line diagram had no English stop information, so I had to rely off of Google maps to know which stop to get off at - as fortunately, the audio announcements and the digital display on the bus announcing upcoming stops had English information.

Concluding Thoughts

So, overall, my first impression of Taiwan's system is that it was very easy to use, even when there was limited English information. As is common for many systems, fare payment was the source of the most anxiety early on. I’m actually totally OK with buying a special pass for a trip *as long as it actually works on everything*.

Fortunately, the EasyCard is valid on everything, but other passes I could have purchased were not. But obviously, if you don’t have to decide how much to put on a card at all, and can just pay as you go with a credit card, that is the easiest system of all.

Buses have dedicated lanes along major arterials, and plentiful waiting areas with large canopies. At many times, there is no English information about the bus on the front display, so bus numbering becomes very important if you don’t know Chinese characters, like me.

My final observation would be that having some bus lines that are numbered, and some that that have names, can be confusing, especially because names need to be translated, whereas numbers do not. I get the underlying motivation of wanting to ‘brand’ BRT lines with special names so see them as more like a Metro line, but numbers could also be used in combination with a name. Also, numbers can be bigger and more visible from far away as the bus is approaching.

I expect my next few posts to focus a bit more on what’s going on ‘behind the scenes’ to get to these impressive, user-friendly outcomes I experienced for the first time. Stay tuned, and sign up for Seamless Bay Area’s mailing list to make sure you get links to future blog posts.

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Ian Griffiths is a board member and former Co-Executive Director of Seamless Bay Area, and now currently works for consulting firm CPCS. He also serves on California’s SB 125 Transit Transformation Task Force.