It’s happened. A day after Taipei and Taipei County announced that an agreement has been reached they started selling monthly passes. Go look at an easy card machine at an MRT station
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Details please!
Guy
NT$1,280/month for Taipei City and New Taipei City
Edit: That’s actually a bit more expensive than European cities like Vienna.
Cool. But it doesn’t quite make sense for me, even living in New Taipei City and commuting with public transport every day. Maybe I should take the YouBike to the train station. Is it still free for the first 30 minutes or so? Hmmm. NT$999 and I would do it.
Yes, first 30 minutes still free in New Taipei City
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At first I thought…too expensive unless you’re traveling from terminal stations in New Taipei into places like Nanjing Fuxing, Da An or Zhongxiao Fuxing.
However, now I’m thinking, this gives incentive to those who have shorter commutes, to take the MRT even more now. So at the end of the day, it could be a bit cheaper than paying each time.
Wait until they increase the prices 
Monthly pass will look good then!
Would that ever happen though?
If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed in Taipei, it’s bus and MRT fares.
Probably only if they increase gas prices as well
There is a string of increases in the costs of staples that won’t be well received. But they had to happen someday.
Ouch. 1280 is far too expensive. This only works if you’re commuting every day from a place that’s over 30 NT away. Having a scooter is still cheaper.
When I see my neighborhood Abeis drive around the park with their 30 year old 50cc scooter to take their dog out for a “walk”, I actually do hope they increase the gas price rather sooner than later.
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Wow, this works perfectly for me!
The article mentions it includes Ubike but how does that work? It cannot be unlimited hours of ubike use right? Anyone have a link to more exact terms and conditions?
From first article (but I don’t know if this is still the case):
Pass also gives passengers 30 minutes of free use of YouBikes within one hour after taking metro trains or buses
Thanks, that makes sense…they ‘couple’ ubike with mrt / bus usage.
Does that include people going to panchiao and Taoyuan?
If so not a bad deal especially if youngsters and oldsters and students get half off
This is basically the $1200 “systemwide pass” I described above. The price is very attractive for folks with a long MRT commute, and then it also allows you to use public transit for non-commute trips basically “for free”.
The fact that they included bus and YouBike makes me pretty certain they will sell a lot of these, because bus + MRT transfers really add up, and this includes it all. As an example, someone with a medium distance commute from Muzha to Taipei Main Station who also has to take a bus from their home to Muzha station currently pays $1240/month to commute five days a week. With this pass, their commute cost is almost exactly covered and then they get free transit on nights and weekends.
This is also a great deal for folks who might be riding a motorbike to work because the bus + MRT or bus + bus transfer pricing has priced them out of what would otherwise be an attractive commute on transit. Now with this pass, transit might make more sense for them.
Lastly, though technically not kosher, this pass can probably be used by more than one person in a household. So my wife and I could get one, and I’d use it every day to get to work, but if she needed it for a solo trip on a night or weekend, she could use it.
The MRT will “lose” NT$940 million on this, so that’s what the two cities are providing to the Metro Corporation as a subsidy. Really happy to see that they are investing this much in getting people to use transit. That said, they could do even more:
- Peak/off-peak fares like the ones in use in London, to encourage trips outside the peak and collect more from those who can afford it (workers)
- An off-peak pass for $800 or so
- A “short commute” pass for $800 or so which only lets you go five or six stops from your home station, like what I described above
- Integrate the Taoyuan Airport MRT and TRA lines with this pass pricing
Any of these would cost more in terms of subsidy. The cities really should prioritize this. Air pollution and noise pollution from scooters should be reduced as much as possible.
And while we’re at it, tear down Civic Boulevard and build a surface park with high quality, wide bike paths!
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Retarded
Include yilan and I’m in !