The new MRT line in Tamsui is now open. The Danhai Light rail from Honshulin to Kanding. While I applaud Taiwan for bringing public transportation out this far, I’m not too impressed with this line. It falls short of previous MRT lines.
On the positive side, the first 4 or 5 stops have a very nice view of the Tamsui river and some of the vegetation in the area from the train.
When the train stops at each station, the doors make an annoying buzzing sound and you have to press a button to open them. They don’t open automatically, which can make it a bit difficult to get out. They also close automatically after an interval and look like they could trap you.
The line also goes fairly slow. Maybe this is by design, but takes longer than the brown line.
It crosses the street in three places. That’s a recipe for disaster in Taiwan. Trains and vehicles should never be able to intersect in Taiwan.
It’s also really uncomfortable when crowded, more so than normal MRT lines. Hopefully the crowds are just out because it’s free for a month and it’s a new thing which usually attracts tens of thousand of Taiwanese for while, then goes back to normal.
I hear they adopted the honor system when it comes to paying the fare (with a hefty fine slapped on you if you’re caught evading the fare). That’s a first in Taiwan AFAIK.
Pretty much all the points you have listed also apply to the Kaohsiung light rail. I think it has been designed to be a lower capacity line. They probably don’t expect the crowds we are seeing right now as it has just opened to continue in the long run…
The doors not opening unless you press a button is quite common overseas. It is to reduce the wind, cold weather and noise for the passengers if no person is getting on or off from that car. I guess it is more suited to lower capacity lines.
Crossing traffic is the same as in Kaohsiung and surprisingly I haven’t heard of that being a disaster.
We tried it yesterday. We planned to go till one end and get the ride back (for free!)
Unfortunately our plan foiled because when it reached terminal station, they asked everyone to get out and allowed people waiting in the queue (thousand people?) to get in.
V[quote=“nonredneck, post:13, topic:175588”]
I’ve at least seen crossing gates on the TRA. These have no gates, so theoretically someone could run a light when the train is on the street.
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Yep! Saw it last night! Idiot driver was going to run the red light, but changed his mind and stopped where? Directly on top of the tracks! I shit you not! There were two orange vested flunkies standing on either side of the road to watch for such nonsense. One of them casually walked over to the driver and motioned with his light stick to pull his head out of his ass and get the fuck off the tracks. So, the driver did end up getting to run the red light. Yessiree, without gates, its only a matter of time before there is a huge accident caused my careless Taiwanese drivers!
They are ‘streetcars’, and the doors are made this way by design. In many countries that use this type you have to open the door by pushing a button even for entering. Streetcars have a higher rate of accidents than metro systems or railway, because they are on street level or cross on street level. They always have the right of way.
Rode it last week as well, fairly unimpressed but I suppose that’s because I’m used to the Taipei MRT standard.
Trams are small and slow, the on board info system was not in sync with where we were, for instance for the whole out the 1st trip it insisted the next station was the one next to HonShuLin every time.
The stations don’t have fare barriers, I can see this being an issue cos why would Taipei MRT want to have a seamless transition with another company that might not collect the fare for them?
The trams cross some large junctions with regular road traffic, this will cause an accident soon as we all know how common running red lights is. It seems daft to me that they did not continue with he line being grade separated all the way.
All in all it has potential but it needs some working on, e.g. get the HonShuLin transfer finished, fare gate barriers and speed it up for goodness sake!
You don’t swipe on the trams themselves, there looks to be two machines (bit like bus machines) for going in and two for getting out at each station so there is no way at all of knowing if people pay. At least on the bus the driver can see if people are. You do not have to walk past the machines to get in/out, they are on the ‘platforms’.
They really should have made the system more as a mini-MRT rather than a ‘streetcar’.