Department of Transportation

The Taipei Public Transportation Office (hereafter refers to as the Office) made the first two-sided bus stop nationwide that display bus information on both sides of the bus stop. Thus, people can look up bus information more easily and quickly while waiting for buses. The new two-sided bus stop was set up alongside the bus lane at MRT Gungguan Station, allowing passengers coming from either side of the bus stop to look up bus information.
Smart bus stops were designed to display bus information on one side only. While choosing which side of the bus stop to display bus information, the Office considered that passengers could look up bus information as well as observing oncoming buses so passengers would not miss any buses while looking up bus information. However, at crowded bus stops, there were many people trying to look up bus information at the same side of bus stop. At some bus stops with longer waiting zone on longer bus lane, passengers could enter the waiting zone from the front and rear end of the waiting zone so some people entering from the rear end would have the difficulty to see the bus information. This time, the Office set up eight new two-sided bus stops at MRT Gungguan Station on the two-way bus lane. People can look up bus information whichever the direction they come from toward the bus stop. This provided more accessible bus information. A total of 50 two-sided smart bus stops will be established by end of this year (2014). Bus stops with more crowds and longer waiting zone were prioritized for the two-sided bus stop such as bus lanes on Nanjing East Road and Zhunghua Road.
The Taipei City Government established the Real-Time Bus Information System, and made the bus information accessible in many ways to the public, in order to encourage the public to travel by public transportation system. While the service quality of the bus information system has been increasing, the number of users looking up bus information through the Internet, mobile phone and telephone has exceeded 2,000,000. Looking up the smart bus stops has become the most frequently used method. A total of 876 smart bus stops have been set up, and there will be more. Appropriate types of bus stops will be selected depending on the conditions of bus waiting zone with the goal to provide more convenient bus service.

2014-02-20