Department of Transportation

Taipei City Government, to encourage people to travel by public transportation system, has been endeavoring to provide advanced smart bus information service by making use of high information technology. There have been 3,738 installed with the stop broadcasting system and real-time bus information system, and among them, free WiFi service is available on 1,221 buses. The number of daily access to the real-time bus information system has exceeded 1.9 million times. There have been 772 smart bus stops established, and it’s scheduled to set up 1,000 smart bus tops by mid of year 2014.
According to the Taipei City Public Transportation Office, the bus stop broadcasting service and real-time bus information became available at end of 2009 in Taipei. Bus stop that a bus is approaching to was broadcasted on bus originally in Mandarin and English, and to serve more diverse groups of people, it was then broadcasted in Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka and English on trial on nationwide 26 bus routes in September 2012. Since the service has earned positive feedback, it has been offered on more bus routes since May 2013. It is expected to provide the service on all bus routes by end of September 2013.
Working towards the goal to becoming the “new city of wireless broadband Internet”, the Department of Information Technology of the Taipei City Government worked in cooperation with the Public Transportation Office in October 2011 to provide “Taipei Free” service (free wireless Internet in public areas of Taipei) on 500 buses (Search the website, www.tpe-free.taipei.gov.tw for Taipei Free bus routes). Now the service has become available on 1,221 buses going on a total of 66 bus routes. Passenger can choose to travel by buses with the “Taipei Free” label, and enjoy free wireless Internet service.
In consideration of passenger’s safety at night, a new feature of the Taipei city real-time bus information system was launched to display the information of “Final bus departed”. It was a reminder for people that the final bus had departed so they wouldn’t keep waiting for the bus. By making use of the real-time bus information database including bus arrival time of all bus routes, the Public Transportation Office was able to provide the bus time schedule. The final bus arriving at key bus stops punctually according to the schedule was put on trial in June 2013 on 10 bus routes (that is the final bus would arrive at each key bus stop on time based on the set schedule, and if it arrives early, it would wait for a while no more than 5 minutes so as to provide reliable bus service at night). The trial service has attracted positive feedback with more than 90% successful rate in average. Many citizens rang 1999 to suggest expanding the service to more bus routes. Therefore, the Public Transportation Office commented that the service will be provided on 20 bus routes in September 2013 so more citizens will be able to use the service.
Stressed further by the Public Transportation Office, various smart bus information services were planned based on the needs of citizens after evaluating and using relevant information technology or techniques. To provide more convenient bus service to citizens, we welcome any comments or suggestions by dialing service line (02)2729-1181 or 1999 Citizen’s Hotline.

2013-08-13