I had a very nice visit to Kaohsiung—and wow was it a treat to ride around using the new youbike system! The 2.0 bikes appear to be the same as their Taipei City counterparts: three gears, new equipment, a delight to ride around town or (via a short ferry ride) along the wonderful bike paths on Cijin.
The one difference I did notice from the Taipei set up is there was no apparent discount scheme rewarding transfers from MRT to youbike. Why not reward people for using this as a last mile system? Yet another data point making me wonder what’s up with the mysteriously (mis)managed KMRT.
i was happy to see it a couple weeks back as well. WAY better than the old system, but to be fair Kaohsiung was the original city to do the biking scheme. So forgiveness granted for being outdated.
Matching transit to peoples needs there hasn’t ever been a strong point in Kaohsiung. so don’t hold your breathe
the YouBikes in KHHville are newer than those old “orange” first-generation ones in Taipei. My wife and grade school kid have been riding around in them and like it.
It helps to have many, many (main) roads with wide sidewalks that people do not walk on (as there are also covered sidewalks side-by-side), so families do not have to worry very often about riding in the streets.
We need Tainan T-bike and Pingtung P-bike to follow suit.
My major downside of these are:
T-bike cannot get registration code.
P-bike seems always have the brake pads on.
