The new system took away the blanket 20% discount to use an Easy Card (this was never intended to be a permanent thing, it was supposed to incentivize use of those cards—and let’s just say the mission was accomplised).
It then added a percentage discount scheme incentivizing more rides. So if you ride 11 times in a month, you get a modest refund onto your card the first time you ride in the next month. If you ride 21 times, you get a bigger percentage refunded—and likewise with 31 and 41 times. If you’re up in that range, however, the flat fee scheme championed by @Marco and others would almost certainly be better value.
I love the Dingchipiao. I’ve increased my transit usage. It’s nice to be able to treat Taipei’s buses and trains like a car and just get on it to run across one or two stations to go and do things or errands and not have to worry that my whole day is going to rack up fees.
If I knew that I would use transit a lot, I used to buy the tourist passes to save money. It’s actually cheaper to use a 1 day pass to go to Keelung from Danshui than it is to pay the whole bus fare.
Now I don’t plan the financial aspect of it. I just go. Excellent!
And $1280 is about $41/Day average. I use more than that just to go to work!
Guangci–Fengtian Temple isn’t supposed to open until Dec '23, I have never used the Letter/Number combinations for TPE MRT ever and don’t know anyone who does. Pretty much if anyone was to say to anyone I know get off as Station L# the first question would be ‘What Station is that then?’. However for R01 I might make an exception.
It’s easier for those who may have difficulty with English or reading Pinyin. For example, some FOB Italian guy might pronounce it so differently that the Taiwanese won’t understand. But the numbers are unambiguous for those situations.
If you are commuter who only uses it Mo-Fr then it’s more like 58/day, since I only spend 60/day at the moment (~10 stations 2x a day commute) and will clock up the 25% discount again when the new card reaches 1 month it’s not really worth it for me.
I’m guessing 1280 was picked as a price point to cover a select few people, if the price point was set too low then they would lose to much revenue.
Did you know TPE roads have a L# code too in the 2000s? There were maps printed, all taxi drivers had to ‘know’ them to make it easier for people. I doubt anyone knows about it now. I seem to remember N-S roads were all As started from the river next to ShiMin being #1 moving east. Then the W-E roads were B’s - because of the Civil Boulevard made it easier to remember which was A and which was B. I can’t remember where the numbers started. I think the system never got going and was dead within a few months.
Er- not worth it, NT$ 60 a day, then get the 25% discount makes it NT$ 45 a day for roughly 22 days/mn => NT$ 990/mnt which is less then the 1,280 monthly ticket.
Yes I leave the house at the weekend but I don’t use MRT/bus.
Not at all if you are commuting and taking the MRT 10x a week already just to get to and from work. Its something you are already doing so no extra time/maths/sunk costs.
Ahhh, one of Mayor Ma’s initiatives! They apparently asked foreigners what they thought of this proposed scheme, and people said they hate it. They went ahead and implemented it anyways.
Thankfully this stupid scheme was eventually quietly dropped.
The letter number scheme was introduced for the Taipei Universiade, so that foreign athletes would find their stations more easily and hopefully be encouraged to travel around.
Pick a day, take a long line (blue) get off and on in each station, you will have enough ‘single’ use to get to the count to have a 20-25% discount in one day. Or am I wrong?
Your refunded discount (not just for that one day adventure, but for your month of riding the MRT) would only appear on your Easy Card the following month the first time you tap into and out of the MRT system.
