Yes, I’ve noticed people waiting a long time for busses outside my apartment.
Tried to use Line Pay on Taoyuan airport metro today since I can get 3.5% cashback if I use it, but it didn’t work. It’s supposed to work, they have a place to scan Line Pay, but when I presented my QR and barcode, it had no reaction. The mrt staff weren’t sure.
Anyone tried it before? It could just be that particular machine was malfunctioning.
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Found these instructions online:
Machine translation:
Open the LINE wallet page on your mobile device and select “Ride Code” (you must complete the registration of the one-card MONEY to enable the ride code function).
Perform facial recognition, fingerprint recognition, or enter a password to unlock the mobile device.
Open the bus code page, and click the payment method (you can choose to pay with the credit card/debit debit card of any card-issuing bank that has been bound or the one-card MONEY card).
When entering or exiting the station at the automatic toll gate that has been established for scanning and checking tickets, tap the pass code on the induction area of the automatic toll gate, and the gate will automatically open after confirming the validity.
Taojie will charge according to the announced fare according to the starting and ending stops of your journey.
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I think this is the reason I can’t use it.
The one-card MONEY the machine translation refers to is 一卡通Money (iPass Money).
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Randomly, blue line towards Nangang is like twice as busy as it has been the last month. Maybe people are going back into the office?
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It was not a great day on the Brown Line in Taipei:
Guy
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That’s why it’s called the brown line.
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It has had its share of adventures over the years, hasn’t it.
Guy
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Taipei built this line when they had no idea what a metro service should be.
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If anyone is unfamiliar with this sordid bit of local history, I can recommend this brilliant piece by Han Cheung as a nice way to get up to speed:
Guy
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Maybe nitpicking, but is it really sordid? It was an entirely new technical undertaking. Certainly troubled.
Massive cost overruns, delays, trains catching on fire . . . It was so bad that Taipei City even elected a DPP mayor to clean up the mess! 
EDIT: Looking again at the Han Cheung article, he does use your preferred adjective troubled. So at minimum, you have some pretty good company.
Guy
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Sucks about today, but I do love the Brown Line because the trains are usually frequent, and the above ground design provides a cool view through the Neihu areas. I particularly love the view coming around the bend near Dahu Park on a sunny day.
The only con to me is that you typically need to transfer from Brown to Blue/Red, and that added transfer coming home is soul-draining at the end of a long and busy work day.
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Yeah the transfers to and from the Brown Line can be brutal—not helped by some of the idiotic station designs in which you cannot descend, say, from the northbound platform at Zhongxiao Fuxing MRT Station, forcing everyone to go up, then across, then down, instead of simply doing down.
Guy
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It had its moment in the sun in Wong Kar-wai’s “Happy Together.”
Starting at 1:57
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Ooooh, a cinematic classic!
Has Taipei ever looked cooler than through the lens of Wong Kar-wai?
Guy
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Totally unrelated but BART is buying new trains as the old ones are 50 years old
Amazing they are still running but the infrastructure needs some work too
One Bart train not sure new or old got stuck under the bay today and trapped hundreds for hours
Shit I get nervous in the six mins it takes to go under the bay I would have a nervous breakdown if trapped for hours
Tube is still shut I hear
Did they get the guys out or are they stuck in a shut tube?