Department of Transportation

Taipei City government worked in cooperation with New Taipei City government to offer toll free phone line 0800-00-5284 (0800-00- I Love Bus) that people could look up the arrival time of buses traveling between these two cities by making a phone call on the aforementioned phone number. It’s an easy and prompt way to retrieve bus arrival time. Since it was first introduced one month ago, the number of users had increased from 550 to 1,008 per day (by about 83%).
Many people looked up bus information through the Internet or smart phones, but some people had no access to the Internet or didn’t have a smart phone. Alternatives to meet these people’s need included the smart bus stop available in 2012 displaying the arrival time of buses to and fro Taipei City and New Taipei City, and telephone information searching system; by making a phone call, people could get the bus information. Such service was further upgraded to free phone line service on March 25, 2014. People paid no fee no matter how they made the phone call on 0800-00-5284 from home phone or cell phone. Number of users to the service increased by 83% since it became available, and the number of users during busy traffic hours accounted for 40% of total number of users. Most of them looked up buses on level 3 bus routes with interval time from 15 to 20 minutes. This suggested most people had the need to know information for buses with longer interval time.
Under the phone information searching system, the bus routes were classified into three groups according to the serial number of bus routes, “Bus routes starting with numbers”, “MRT-transit bus routes” and “Other bus routes”. To look up the bus information, people can either key in serial number of bus routes or input name of bus stop vocally. Furthermore, for passengers who routinely travel on the same bus route, the system offered “Quick search with code” function. After getting the bus information, users could follow the instructions to press “*”, and listen to the code. To search for bus information on the same bus route next time, simply key in “#code” for fast retrieval of bus information. Our records revealed that searching by pressing the keys and vocal input took about 60-90 seconds. The quick search with code took only 30 seconds which was time saving and easy to do, and it could avoid unclear input voice due to background noise or accent. Statistics showed about 42% users chose the quick search with code during week days; the percentage was higher than that, 26%, during holidays. Thus, the quick search with code was a more convenient option for passengers who travel on the same bus route routinely.
To obtain the ‘code”, apart from dialing the toll free phone line, it’s also available on the Taipei City Real-Time Bus Information 5284 Website (http://www.5284.com.tw/phone), New Taipei City Real-Time Bus Information e-bus Website (http://e-bus.ntpc.gov.tw/), or making a phone call on 1999.

2014-05-08