Welcome to the 2023 Life on the MRT thread.Will we see if the Minsheng Community/Xizhi line actually happen?
Yesterday, screaming in big characters on his t-shirt, look I’m Canadian and I only need a t-shirt in this Taiwan winter weather.
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Opening of Ankeng light rail scheduled for February 10.
There goes my hope of cheap housing by the hills…
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If they don’t go at lightspeed very few will ride it.
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Depends. Morning traffic in Ankeng is a nightmare. If it can help, it’s OK.
It is certainly not going to be a tourist attraction like the light rails in Tamsui or Kaohsiung.
Who will ride it? Students and office people that take the bus.
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I live in the mountains around Ankeng. This is totally useless. I might try it once for the novelty, but there’s no way this makes any difference to my day-to-day transport needs.
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There’s a (slow) trend beginning worldwide where cities are moving from making (underground) MRT to street level tramway lines.
The main reason being that MRT goes with car-centered cities whereas tramway accommodates a healthier variety of transportation means, and of course for the price of 1 line of MRT you can afford around 7 lines of tramway.
I am longing for the switch to happen in Taiwan…
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And they should be happy with the accidents that happen, tram vs cars. Tram is mostly in its right.
Because people crossing tram rail tracks forget that a tram is not easy to stop at a moments notice.
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Visit Kaohsiung. You’ll have ample opporunities to see how this works in real time!
Guy
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I don’t think switching is a good idea. Each forms of transit have their own advantages and uses.
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The traffic isn’t that bad now compared to the past. Changed with the new road so I don’t think anyone is going to give up their car for this.
Cutting the grass. This was taken last Sunday night at nearly 11 o’clock.
Looked like someone being called back to fix a poorly done job.
Oh right, I haven’t had the chance to see that tramway in Gaoxiong.
Let us look then at some results from December 2022 (not ages ago, just recently):
This is just a glimpse of what such surface level systems face in Taiwan, where driving etiquette is (ahem) not always exactly what one might hope.
Guy
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I am longing for the switch to happen in Taiwan…
Please no, one of the great things about the MRT is that it is not a tram. Big mistake to have trams here unless they are run on a grade separated system similar to the majority of the Neihu line. Why spend all that money on a tram system just to have to slow, stop/start you might as well just do it as cheap as possible and use electric busses.
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Don’t sit next to someone when there are other empty seats around. Two guys ended up in fisticuffs after one complained to the other for sitting next to him when there were other empty seats nearby.
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A lady had a fit because I had the audacity to sit next to her on the bus. No more seats left. It was one of those double masked, gloved up, plastic glasses-donning people that I strongly suspect blame foreigners for the virus. I’ve seen her on the bus before and she threw a fit last time I was on the bus, not beside her, but across the aisle. She moved last time, but this time she was on a window seat and would not stop fidgeting between attempting to get up but aborting mission or getting me to move while I sat there staring blankly forward.
Last time she huffed and changed seats, I gave her the stink eye when getting off the bus.
This time she scoffed at me to move.
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I’m sorry you had to go through this. I hope next time she sees you, she gets off the bus and just leaves you alone 
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Nah. I am OK trolling the racists. While few and far between. I enjoy my existence being the bane of theirs.
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