Taipei Metro Bus: How it will change bus service in Taipei?
Taipei City is introducing a new bus service from 5th of July, called Taipei Metro Bus (in Chinese 幹線公車). Those who take public transportation, especially buses regularly in the city might have seen already the new Metro Bus icons and bus stops signs along the major roads and avenues, but probably not too many people know exactly what changes will it bring to Taipei's bus operation. In the following article I will write about the major changes that were already announced by the city government, but I would also like to express some of my thought and concerns about the new Metro Bus system.
First of all, I would like to highlight that I am glad that the city is trying to improve the current bus operation in Taipei. I think it is necessary to better organize the bus routes (such as try to avoid too many overlapping lines) and create more direct trunk lines which can provide faster service along the corridors. The new Taipei Metro Bus service is trying to do something similar: it includes 5 (already existing) trunk bus lines in Taipei, namely the route 263, 285, 287, 518, 642 as you can see it on the map. These lines running on the main avenues (Xinsheng-Songjiang新生－松江, Dunhua敦化, Minsheng民生, Renai仁愛, Zhongshan->Neihu 中山->內湖) and connecting the North-South and East-West part of Taipei.
The aim of the new system is to upgrade the bus service along these lines. The major changes that were announced by the city government will be the following:
- 4-6 min peak hour headway
- 5-10 min off-peak headway
- half price discount when transferring between one of the Metro Bus lines and a regular bus line within one hour (same as MRT-bus transfer)
- Metro Bus lines will get new unified design (including new icon, color schemes (East-West lines shown with blue, North-South with green and others with yellow), bus stop signs for better identification
- The city will also have some special promotion at the major stops when the new system is launched.
As I wrote above, when I first read about this new service I was very happy, because it shows that the government is trying to improve the quality of the public transportation which is definitely an important step to reduce traffic congestion and create a more livable city. However after taking closer look on the proposed lines and the upgraded service I had some concerns about the success of the Metro Bus service:
1. The Metro Bus trunk lines only include already existing lines, and their routes were not modified at all. That means that they are actually serve as "trunk lines" on part of their route only (mainly along the main avenues inside Taipei). The rest of their route still follows the smaller streets with several left and right turns along the routes, which will slow down the buses due to the increased number of red lights, traffic etc. For example these sections are the Ximen- NTU Hospital for route 263, Taipei Main Station area for route 287, Tianmu for route 285 and Neihu for route 518.
2. The second consideration is related the first one: only part of their route runs in exclusive bus lanes, which could help the buses to maintain their schedule and avoid traffic jams. The rest of their route will be strongly influenced by the morning and afternoon traffic jams, therefore the whole service will be interrupted. I wonder how the buses will be able to maintain the 4-6 min headway when they need to wait in the traffic jam. One possible way is to further increase the number of buses, but I doubt that this can be a good solution if extra (half) empty buses are running on these lines just in order to maintain the timetable. This is bad for the operator, bad for the traffic but also bad for the environment as well.
However, if the buses cannot maintain their schedule than the whole purpose of the new system is questionable. If the passengers cannot get a satisfying service, they wont choose it in the future, which can cause more harm for the overall transit operation as citizens loose their positive feeling about public transportation.
3. Besides the operation of Metro Bus trunk lines, there should be also a revision on the other regular bus lines as well, otherwise passengers wont feel any difference between Metro Bus and non-Metro Bus service. For example along the major corridors there are other bus lines which runs almost the same route as the Metro Bus line, such as route 643 or 505 on Xinsheng and Songjiang Road where 642 is running. Or if there is no revision on their routes at least their operation hours should be integrated with the Metro Bus line, so they can complement each other instead of competing with each other.
4. My last thought or consideration would be, that I actually doubt that the current icons and upgraded bus stop signs would really provide enough information for passengers that they are about to take an upgraded service. So fare there is only one small icon is shown in the front and side of the bus as well as on the top of the bus stop. But regular passengers usually don't pay attention on such small details, therefore they wont even recognize that they are taking Metro Bus or just a regular bus.
If the city really wants to highlight that these lines provides better service than the rest of the bus routes, they should paint all the buses that run as Metro Buses with the same color (currently each bus has the color of their operator), so passengers can easily recognize which bus belongs to Metro Bus and which is a regular service only.
Also, there should be Metro Bus network maps shown in the bus and metro stops as well as major intersections of the city (most likely shown together with the MRT route map), so locals or tourists could easily see where are the fast trunk lines in Taipei.
But most importantly, in order to get a well-designed and high level service, all these points should be implemented at the same time:
- trunk lines should run in exclusive bus lanes all the way along their routes (only exception could be those parts of the city where there are no traffic jams expected) and avoiding too many turns into smaller roads and streets
- other regular bus routes should be revised in order to serve mostly as feeder buses for the trunk lines
- the service should be more unified, such as same color for buses (despite of the operator), unified route maps, etc.