Bike sharing becoming a hit in Taipei
CNA 2012-11-18 15:29
A YouBike station in Taipei. (Photo/Su Wei-hsuan)
Walk for a couple of minutes to a park, grab a bicycle and ride to a destination. This is not stealing, but sharing.
"It's very convenient and cheap to ride around the city now," said a Cherry Huang, whose daily commute to work has changed since the Taipei city government launched a bike sharing system in 2009.
Huang, who used to walk for at least 30 minutes every day from her home to the National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, where she volunteers, now uses the shared bikes, shortening her travel time to just 10 minutes.
"I also use it to buy groceries sometimes," she told CNA, pointing to the front basket attached to the bikes.
Huang is among a growing number of people in Taipei who are using this novel way of getting around. The program has become very popular in Taipei since it was launched.
YouBike, the brand name of the capital's bike sharing program, rents out over 10,000 bikes each day, with the turnover rate of each bike as high as eight to nine times per day, according to the city government.
People not only use the bike sharing system to commute to work, but also for exercise and recreation. It's easy to spot the orange bikes passing by.
The project started in Taipei's Xinyi District with 500 bikes and 11 rental stations in 2009. In August, the city government reached an agreement with Giant, one of the country's leading bicycle makers and dealers, to expand the system citywide.
Signing a seven-year operation contract at NT$268 million (US$9.22 million), the city government wants to use Giant's big name to make its citizens more willing to try bike sharing — a practice that is already popular in some cities, including New York, Paris, London and China's Hangzhou.
The YouBike system is part of the city government's efforts to promote green transport and establish a bike-friendly environment.
To encourage more people to give the shared bikes a try, starting from August, the city government began allowing registered users to ride the bikes for free for the first half hour of rental. It only costs NT$10 for each additional 30 minutes.
The offer will last until the end of 2013. The city government has not decided whether to chage the rate after that, but promised to keep it low in the future.
The incentive worked.
Nearly 116,000 people have registered as a member of the program, a sharp jump from some 2,000 people back when the program was first launched.
"It is a win-win-win situation," said John Ho, general manager of Giant's YouBike Division.
The city can bring down carbon emissions, while citizens keep fit and the company makes money, he told CNA.
"Citizens spend a little money and are able to ride a quality bike," Ho said, adding that each YouBike costs nearly NT$10,000 (US$342).
Men in suits or women in skirts also find the bikes easy to ride with the user-friendly design. At night, the bikes' headlight and taillight are automatically switched on when one pedals, he said.
With specially tailored electronic locks, no one is needed to attend to the bikes and the YouBike program staff can get the latest information about the number of bikes available at each station via the internet and dispatch more if needed, said Ho.
Currently, there are 41 rental stations with a fleet of 1,460 bikes in five of the city's 12 districts, according to the city government's Department of Transportation. The department aims to expand the scale to 173 rental stations and 5,850 bikes by mid-2014 throughout the city.
However, that's not considered to be enough, said Liu Chia-yu, a section chief at the department.
"It has become so popular that we have got so many citizens complaining there are not enough bikes to rent or not enough rental stations being installed," he said.
The city government and Giant are having extensive meetings to make sure the system operates smoothly and to see if the network can be expanded in a faster way, he told CNA.
Other major cities in Taiwan, including Kaohsiung and New Taipei, also have similar projects, but they are not as successful, as Taipei has more bike sharing stations, Liu said. Taichung and Tainan, nonetheless, are planning to join the effort soon.
The bike sharing program comes as Taiwan has been building a network of bicycle paths to encourage not only local residents to ride bikes, but also foreign tourists to tour the island on two wheels.
Taipei has been especially active. Since 2008, the city government has constructed 37.7 kilometers of routes in urban areas just for bikes, and nearly 100 kilometers of routes that can be used for both pedestrians and bikers, according to city government statistics.
The city has also tried to build bike lanes along motor vehicle lanes on major streets to make it easier for bikers to get around in urban areas.
However, one of the first attempts — the one along Dunhua North and South Road — was heavily criticized.
The city government set up a trial area right next to the inside lane along one of the city's busiest roads, which caused inconvenience to taxi and bus drivers, while no bikers were willing to risk their lives riding amidst heavy traffic.
The failed attempt to merge bike and vehicular traffic cost over NT$60 million (US$2.05 million).
In another attempt, the city government separated and elevated bike routes, setting up urban bike routes by widening pavements. That seemed more acceptable to people, said Liu.
In the future, the city will continue to focus on buiding urban bike routes, expanding the YouBike system and providing more parking spaces for bikes, Liu noted.
"We would like more and more people to use the 'green transport'," said Liu.
The challenge now is to convince more people like Huang.
Having two folding bikes of her own, Huang said she was initially skeptical about the shared bikes, adding that she wondered back then why people would use the bike sharing program when almost every family has a bike or two at home.
But now she is a frequent user of the shared bikes, renting them at least twice a day.
"I don't need to worry about my bike being stolen and it's really good to ride," she said, praising this project as a "rare" good policy that everyone, young and old alike, can benefit from.
"After all, riding bikes is not only good for your health, but also reduces carbon emissions," she added.
