Taipei City Government

　　To enable the sustainable development of the City’s public bicycle system, Taipei City’s Department of Transportation is carrying out an analysis on YouBike’s usage characteristics. With the user-pays principle as the precondition, a payment method will be drawn to encourage and expand green transport users.
　　Currently, the daily usage of the City’s public bicycles has already exceeded 70,000 times, with a turnover rate of 12 times per day, far exceeding that in overseas cities such as London and New York. The analysis of YouBike rental information shows that from August to October 2014, most users are non-frequent and short distance users, with 80% of them using less than 4 times per month (including 41-42% who use once per month, 21.8% who use twice per month, 10.7% who use thrice per month and 6.5% use four times per month). Only 5.8% of the users are frequent users (those who use more than 10 times per month). Their average riding time is about 25 minutes, with riding time of less than 30 minutes each time involving 81% of these frequent users, indicating that most users use the bicycles for short distance travel. YouBike users are significantly different from commuters who use public transport like bus and MRT.
　　The main factors for the success of the City’s public bicycle system are: no annual fee, low usage fee, simple registration and extensive kiosks. These are in line with the objective of providing convenient and economical rental service, in order to encourage the public to develop a habit of embracing green transportation. Overseas public bicycle systems require users to pay an annual membership fee to enjoy free rides for a certain time period. For example, the annual fee for New York City public bicycle system is 95 USD (about NTD 2,945), while London charges 90 GBP (about NTD 4,320), and Paris 29 EUR (about NTD 1,073).
In addition, overseas major cities charge at least NTD 37 (New York 4 USD, Paris 1 EUR, and London 1 GBP) for the first 30 minutes after the free period, and adopt a progressive rate mechanism to encourage short distance usage and increase turnover. Taipei City currently adopts a ‘no annual’ fee system, and charges NTD 10 every half hour. The City Government subsidizes EasyCard holders with free rides for the first 30 minutes, and adopts a progressive rate after 4 hours. Should the government adopt a user-pays charging mechanism in the future, the rate will be relatively cheaper than that in overseas cities in comparison.
To attain sustainable development for the City’s public bicycle system, and make use of limited resources more effectively, the Department of Transportation will review the subsidy method based on the current usage characteristics to make adjustments regarding a user-pays method.