Department of Transportation

According to the survey report of the“2012 Citizens’ Daily Use of Transport Modes” released by the Department of Statistics, MOTC on May 3, 2013, Taipei City again held the highest national market share in green transportation and public transportation, while its bicycle market share also surpassed 5.5%, an increase of 1.3% compared to last year. On the other hand, it had the lowest national market share in regard to private motor transportation.

The Department of Transportation, Taipei City Government (here after referred to as the DOT) notes that the MOTC has national concerted criteria for its annual surveys, and the DOT has used those criteria as crucial reference for reviewing its administration efficiency and drawing up important policies. The results of the 2012 survey show that Taipei City outperformed other counties and cities in various indicators. For instance, it took the highest national public transportation market share (38%), the highest non-motor transportation market share (20%) in the Taiwan region, and the highest national green transportation market share (58%). Moreover, in terms of market shares of single-transportation, it had the highest nationwide city bus market share (18.9%); the highest ‘by foot’ market share (14.5%) in Taiwan; its bicycle market share was 5.5%, having significantly increased by 1.3% from the previous year; and the motorcycle market sharewas the nation’s lowest (25.5%). All of the percentages illustrate that Taipei City’s friendly green transportation environment has taken shape (see attached Tables 1 and 2 for details).

The survey results also indicate the following: 44% of Taipei citizens commute to work, with 84.8% of the working locations being in Taipei City and 11.9% of them in New Taipei City; Taipei citizens’ daily average going-out frequency was 2.56 times, in which the frequency of 2 times accounted for the largest share (69.7%) while 1% of citizens went out more than 7 times a day; in terms of use of various transportation mode categories, the vast majority (73.2%) used only one transport mode category. In addition, females, students and teenagers aged between 15 and 18 were the core users of public transportation; the difference between males and females in their use of public transportation has been narrowing year by year (it has diminished to 4.5% over the past three years). As such, greater effort to get more males and motorcycle riders to use public transport and non-motor transportation shall be made in the future.

The DOT points out that the development of green transportation is an important policy of the City government. Its success however lies in citizens’ participation and support. In recent years, the city government has put in tremendous resources to elevate the City’s green transportation environment. It hopes that, by providing humanistic, friendly, intelligent, amicable, convenient and efficient services, more and more citizens will opt for public transportation and non-motor transportation. As a whole, the results of the survey conducted by the MOTC suggest that Taipei City’s green transportation market share is still growing by degrees. The progress must be credited to all the citizens for their full support in utilizing green transportation. With the construction of MRT’s Xinyi line and Songshan line to be completed in succession, and the number of YouBike users continuing to hit new record highs, we anticipate continuous support for green transportation from our citizens.

2013-06-17