Bike ride from Taipei to TaoYuan city

Hello,
I bought a bike this week from Taipei. I’m going to be picking it up on Saturday, and I want to ride it from Taipei to Taoyuan city near the train station.

Does anyone know if there is a service road along the #1, or along the train route?

Or if anyone has ridden their scooters from Taipei to TaoYuan, which route did you take?

Thanks everyone.

Gary=-,
garysaville@gmail.com

I think you should take the bike path out to Sanxia and then go through Yingge to Taoyuan. I’ll look for specific instructions later.

Do they allow bikes on the TRA train if you pop the wheels off?

I’m guessing you want to transport the bike to Taoyuan and not enjoy the (lack of) scenery between Taipei and Taoyuan. You can send the bike by cargo on the train. You’ll need to go to any station except the Taipei main (which has no cargo office). Best if you can speak some Mandarin when you do this. As far as I know, you can’t take a bike on the passenger trains.

The main reason I’m getting the mountain bike is to be able to stay in Taipei later on the weekends, so I’d prefer to ride back. I was just thinking it would be much easer going the other way for the first time. Taoyuan to Taipei.
If I talked to people along the way, I’m sure any 2 toothed farmer could point the way to Taipei.

[quote=“Gary Saville”]The main reason I’m getting the mountain bike is to be able to stay in Taipei later on the weekends, so I’d prefer to ride back. I was just thinking it would be much easer going the other way for the first time. Taoyuan to Taipei.
If I talked to people along the way, I’m sure any 2 toothed farmer could point the way to Taipei.[/quote]

I don’t get this. Trains run pretty late between Taipei and Taoyuan. Are you planning to bike bike at 3am?

Taking bike by train as Toasty said you have to take it to the cargo office and it’ll travel on the night train ready for you to pickup in later. You have to fill out a basic form with address, ID number, destination, etc. If I remember rightly it costs about half the usual fare. If it’s a damn expensive bike, don’t risk it as when I sent my bike to a small station outside Taichung and picked it up at 2am, the place was deserted. Had to scale the secure area and retrieve it myself.

Go to WanHua station or SongShan for this as Toasty said, you can’t do it from Taipei Main.

You can as suggested pop off the wheels and stick it in a bike bag. A friend did this and had no problems. He had to stand with it though all the way back from Taitung between the carriages but he didn’t have to pay extra.

There are the big buses that ply intercity routes. You can stick your bike in the luggage space, probably in a bag is best. A bit more expensive but def easier and they run all night.

bagging it is the way to go.

there is a fairly direct route taoyuan-taipei along the #1 highway (note not the freeway) that I have taken on the scooter numerous times. It reasonably well signposted for both directions.
From Taoyuan get to the big intersection near Tigerhead mountain and follow the signs. From Taipei you need to get on the bridge with the bike/scooter lane very near Ximen, and follow the signs.

The only thing I can think that puts me off the idea is that you will be on a bike for probably 1.5hrs sucking in large lung-fulls of very very bad air. no thanks.

Last saturday while I was in town the last train was leaving for Taoyuan at 11:45. That’s not so late in my books.
At any rate, I often stay out to 4 or 5 at Rodeo’s here in Taoyuan. I’d probably do the same if I was in Taipei.

Another reason I’d like to ride back is for the exercise.

Gary,

Ratlung and myself have been talking about doing some MTBing around Taoyuan. I was out scootering this morning and found some excellent looking ridge singletrack in the greenbelt area between Taoyuan and Linkou. Around that fitness circuit/lookout thing if you know where that is.

i used to bike around tiger head mountain when i had time to go out and do things … :frowning:

summer’s almost here! :sunglasses:

We should organize a weekend ride sometime.
I picked up a Giant Trance Mntbike from Alan’s Bike shop in Taipei. It’s a pretty decent speced soft tale. I’m pretty stoked to get it out and dirty!
Alan’s website has a list of spots around Taipei, and they give a good rating to a spot in Taoyuan. I’ll get the details Saturday when I go in to pick up the bike.

I agree with Feiren. You can have a nice ride to Taoyuan along the riverside parks, but you can ride all the way to Yingge, not just Sanxia. I don’t know how the ride would be from Yingge to Taoyuan City, but it doesn’t look far on the map.

From Alan’s ride up tot he intersection of Jilong Rd and Roosevelt Rd. Turn left and cross the bridge into Yonghe. On the other side of the bridge, ride back to the river wall, where you cna go over some steps onto the riverside and find the bike path. Head north (which is like a right turn after coming down off the bridge). From here you can follow the riverdide bikepath through Yonghe, Zhonghe to Banqiao. In Banqiao, cross the Xinghai Bridge to Xinzhuang (htis is the easiest to cross) and continue in the direction you were going (whci will now be south west). Continue through Xinzhuang and Shulin and the bike path finishes in Yingge. I’d say this’d take about 2 hrs at a normal speed. From Yingge to Taoyuan, I’m not sure which Rd is the best to take, but the 110 looks pretty direct on the map.

Brian

[quote=“Muzha Man”][quote=“Gary Saville”]The main reason I’m getting the mountain bike is to be able to stay in Taipei later on the weekends, so I’d prefer to ride back. I was just thinking it would be much easer going the other way for the first time. Taoyuan to Taipei.
If I talked to people along the way, I’m sure any 2 toothed farmer could point the way to Taipei.[/quote]

I don’t get this. Trains run pretty late between Taipei and Taoyuan. Are you planning to bike bike at 3am?[/quote]

I see two themes in this thread: 1) recreational riding 2) riding as a means of transport home from Taipei after a night on the town.

To address 2), may I strongly recommend against it? Something about late nights, bicycles, possible alcohol consumption and crazy drivers/ riders that don’t mix. A lot of the roads out of Taipei don’t suit bicycles at the best of times, especially the motorcycle lanes on the bridges where scooter punks are going flat out in confined spaces. As Mucha man notes, the trains actually do run pretty late. Failing that, go with friends and split a cab. You can get private cabs that will do the trip for considerably cheaper than regular cabs on the meter. You can bargain with regular cabs to accept a price off the meter as well. If you have a friend or two with you, it’s not oppressively expensive.

there’s a lot of different ways you could go from yingge to taoyuan. some of them would be more pleasant than others in terms of traffic and the like. if you were just interested in getting there, i would say 40 minutes on the 110 (i think it’s that one) should do it, faster if you are fast. if you are more interested in pleasant biking, i would budget a little more time, but a much better ride.

hope to get out after finals and find some of these old ways again. when i do, i’ll post a route or two.