Taipei to introduce new, simpler bus routes for city lines

This article was published by the Taiwan Headlines on March 15, 2006. It reports that the Taipei City Government recently announced its decision to introduce a new system of mass transportation in 2007, which will feature fewer buses running around the city on checkerboard routes. The move represents the government's attempt to ease the problem of traffic gridlock in the crowded city.

With the construction of more branch lines in Taipei's mass rapid transit (MRT) system underway, many bus routes and stops have been relocated and caused more traffic confusion in the city. To solve this problem, the government plans to develop a new bus transportation system that operates on lines parallel to the MRT system and across the city's busiest roads.

Because Taipei's business districts run north-south and east-west, it should not be difficult to re-set the bus routes along specific main roads. According to government officials, the aim of such change is to map out shorter and simpler bus routes and to create greater convenience for commuters.

In the future, bus transfer charges will follow the precedent of MRT-to-bus transfers within a designated period of time, with any number of transfers to be counted as a one-way fare. Meanwhile, only those buses that operate within the city will be asked to modify their dispatches according to the volume of passengers on their routes and their intersections with the MRT lines. In other words, those buses that operate in Taipei's suburb areas are likely to maintain their original routes.