I finally took the ride out to Daxi along the riverside bike path. You’re right. The path stops at Yingge. That’s because the end of the path is where the county line is, so once you’re on the country road, you know you’re in Taoyuan. The country road section was my favorite. Riding through the rice paddies is something you don’t experience in Taipei, despite sharing the road with the occasional vehicles driven by local farmers. Also, I had no idea the town of Daxi was located atop a hill, and I had to climb on the main road with heavy traffic. That was the worst part of the ride.
Yeah, I guess weekend traffic does not help there as well …
Next time, you can try the other side of the river (right side looking downstream),
Although the bike path stops in Sanxia, you can stay along the river to pass town.
You will then reach a small road further along the river, passing the dam/reservoir, then a short but steep climb.
From the top it is a down, to the road from Sanxia to Daxi, which you can follow further.
Daxi is always crowded, but the shortcut should be quiet, even in the weekend.
I noticed they’re building a new bridge that’s pointed directly at Sanxia. It’s got a pretty impressive bike ramp that leads up to a deck below the automobile deck and then it branches into two suspended bike paths. It should make the connection from the Sanxia side to the left bank a lot easier and fun. The bridge looked 80% complete. If anyone gets to ride on it in the coming months, give us a heads up here.
You guys can make updates on the bike path to this thread…
Pictures and/or Google map locations to updates are not necessary, but much appreciated!
I’ll keep the posts you guys have made in the past few weeks here so you can come back to them.
Once again, thanks for all your replies to the cycling forum guys. Keep em coming.
i went for a youbike ride earlier on one of the river paths. found it quite annoying how there wasnt any youbike stations on the river park, at least this one. and i had to go find the station then ride through some piddly little streets with typically braindead traffic. theres also no easy way to get to the (Really nice) river park near my house either. if they could at least build easy paths to the river park it would be nice. i am aware some places have these, when i exited the river park there was a very convenient path out of it and a easy place to park.
There are many bike rental stations along most of the river paths. Youbike stations wouldn’t be convenient as the trucks used to take away excess bikes and replenish stocks would need to also travel on the bike path creating another set of issues.
I remember touching upon Youbike stations not being too close to riverside entrances a few years ago. However, there’s so many stations now that…this is unlikely?
I’m curious, where were you renting from and where did you enter the riverside?
There’s also local bike shops that do rentals near entrances and government may not want to create too much competition for them.
The rental stations on the riverside (I think) are all government subsidized and they just revamped the fleet with new bikes half a year to a year ago. The only issue is if you don’t have a scooter or car, you’re walking a helluva distance to rent a bike.
next to dadaocheng, had to ride down a part of di hua jie, all the streets there are narrow.
i exited at gong guang, very smooth.
I agree with the narrow part. I’m glad I never have to go through that way anytime after 7-8AM or in the early evenings.
So you rented from Yong Le market, south of Da Dao Cheng entrance, or Da Dao Park, north of the entrance. Both are approximately 500m from the entrance. You sure you didn’t take a wrong turn?
Besides the stations being inaccessible for service trucks, another reason there are no Youbike stations in the riverside parks is that during a typhoon, the rivers often overflow. (This happens at least once every couple of years.) Everything in the riverside parks would be submerged.
the one from the park, north. i had 2 family members with me, one 60. both not used to cycling in this kind of madness and both not really happy with it. it may not be far but i still had all kinds of shite to navigate.
Having older family members with you definitely changes the scenario. It is pretty bad over there in terms of narrow streets and traffic.
They could just create an elevated platform for the U Bikes, some guard rails and ramps to go up/down
Probably the main reason there are no youbikes in the parks is that they would complete with those bike rental places and those bike rental places probably protested to the government not to build them there.