I am moving from taipei to taichung soon. I have a scooter in taipei i want to move it to taichung without driving it down. I have heard whispers about a train service that will pick up scooters in one city and then nicely deliver them to another city for a decent price. Is this true? Has anyone actually used this service before? If so could you please pass me a phone number, address or website so that i may do the same. Thanks
Hi and welcome, Jarv.
It’s usually worth doing a search for stuff like this. I searched for “scooter train” in forum “Vroom, vroom” and got this thread which has some useful info:
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?p=317245
Be aware the railway shipping services have been scaled back substantially. My gf had her scooter shipped back from Gaoxiong recently and had to pick it up in Wanhua (we live in Yangmei). There were no other stations handling scooters anymore. Rumor has it, soon none will at all. Definitely confirm that you still can ship to Taizhong by train. You may have to make other arrangements.
You can send bikes by truck which is probably why the scooter train is dying a death.
I don’t really know much about this as I have never used it myself, but I do know that there are certain collection points around Taipei where you drop off your bike, pay the money and a truck will come and send your bike to another collection point in Taichung - or other major city in Taiwan.
It costs something like 500 NT
My understanding is that the closure has something to do with the cost of providing the scooter freight service versus the cost of delivering it. That makes sense as the cost of shipping a bike from one end of the island to the other was reasonable, to say the least, and probably resulted in the service being a money loser.
My gf had the option of using a truck service to have her bike shipped directly to Yangmei. She opted for the train (and the subsequent inconvenient trip to Wanhua to retreive it) because the cost would have higher and the service slower.
I remember some ass-sore (but fun) rides from Taoyuan to Yilan through the mountains. We would then throw our bikes in freight, catch an express train back home and pick up our bikes the next morning. It was so cheap and easy. Too bad those days are gone.