I agree.
Guy
There is no Bitan Station.
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Just change it to Beitou and Xin Beitou 
Whoops.
Right!
Guy
But there is a Bitan Scenic Area. That is why they had to add the extra announcement for people who would get off in Chichang Station expecting to be already at the lake. Many, many people did that, especially tourists.
Uh oh, are the ghosts angry?
About 1,100 Taipei MRT passengers were evacuated on Wednesday morning after white smoke billowed through the cars on a Blue Line train, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said. The incident occurred at about 8am when the train was at Longshan Temple Station on its way to Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center Station. TRTC said the passengers were evacuated according to standard operating procedures and put on the next train. TRTC was investigating the cause of the smoke.
Awww shieeet
But apparently some British consultant advised the planners that this arrangement will lead to unpleasant transfer points–and that building u-shaped lines that run parallel at certain point will enable smoother transfers at key stations.
Father of a friend of a mine was one of those consultants.
Apparently, the unique geography of Taipei was what made a network layout that included lots of same-platform transfers feasible. They were really excited to try something like this since at the time, a network with as many same-platform transfers as Taipei Metro now has had not been built, but was seen by planners as a kind of ideal system.
In practice it does work quite well.
There is a downside, though: trains have to travel much slower around turns, and there are lots of turns in such a system. This increases travel time between stations, offsetting some of the savings from being able to transfer on the same platform and not navigate pedestrian passages. Also, turns cause “flange squeal,” and this noise is particularly bad on the Taipei Metro between CKS and Dongmen on the Red Line, and Dongmen and Guting on the Green Line: the nexus of cross-platform transfers.
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How does one know it’s working?
…makes me want to vomit.
It’s a pretty harsh sound, but I found that after a while I just started tuning it out.
Well, a transit planner could give you a proper analysis of ridership, ride times, capital costs, operations & maintenance, and so on, of a comparison between two or more options: a classic grid of straight lines and the more experimental web of turning lines that was ultimately built.
I’m sure they did such a comparison back in the 80s and then decided on the hybrid grid/web that we have today.
I only say it works quite well because Taipei Metro has definitely been a huge success. Ridership is high, farebox recovery hovers right around 100%, and other systems even within Asia look to Taipei a as model for operations and maintenance best practices.
Now, would a classic grid have been even better? We’ll never know.
Paris solved this problem by using rubber tires and no rails. So they can take very sharp turns
Thanks, but I meant to ask about ‘anti-suicide stuff’ working. I thought you were saying all that greenery was working as intended.
I’d like to know how Dongmen station got its name. The actual Dongmen (the gate) is near NTU Hospital several kilometers away from the station. It should’ve been named Yongkang Street.
The Dongmen Market is nearby.
According to Google Maps there are a bunch of new straight line services running through central Taipei, has anyone tried these yet?
That’s got to be a mistake. Those don’t exist.
Edit : seems like their algorithm plotted a straight line between stations that have a different path.
In the huh? news:
From Oct. 13, passengers traveling to Songshan Airport station, Taipei Arena station, Longshan temple station, Dongmen Station and Xiangshan Station can enjoy a 10-minute long piece of ambient music integrating the history and culture of the places as of the second stage of a program called Taipei MRT ambient music.
So that was the testing of the “miu miu me” tune and wedding song they had at Hsimen.
A couple of these sound like porno music. The city may not get the anticipated result.