Department of Transportation

The Taipei City Public Transportation Office today (January 17) put up the new version of the 5284 Bus Information Website to the Internet at which the public will enjoy more convenient data searching service for public transportation. Using the innovative function, users key in estimated traveling time, and selected combination of bus, MRT or railway, and will get recommended transportation routes listed in the order of required traveling time. Users can look up desired transportation route so as to arrive in destination more efficiently.

The 5284 Bus Information Website has become very popular to the public since its establishment in October 2008. The number of users is in average up to 127,000 per day. The information that is most commonly looked up is bus arrival time with daily number of users up to 110,000. About 13,000 users per day search for bus routes to arrive their destinations. The original 5284 Bus Information Website was designed to recommend the bus route with the shortest distance to users without taking into account the traveling time. Therefore, there would be fewer transportation recommendations as provided by the website, or the recommended bus routes, though in short distance, may cost longer traveling time due to busy traffics.

In December of 2009, all bus companies had provided bus time schedule. Based on the information and public opinions, a complete bus traveling time database covering all bus routes, bus stops and operating hours have been established. In 2012, the office, considering that most passengers wish to arrive in their destinations as fast as possible, began to work out the plan based on the database that displays recommended transportation routes in the order of required traveling time. The following example explains how this works. For a passengers who plans to go to Hsing Tian Temple from Xinyi Administrative Center at noon on January 18, the new 5284 website will provide the recommendations as follows: 1. Travel on Bus 20 and transfer to Zhonghe Xinlu Line, total traveling time about 28 minutes; 2. Travel on Xinyi New Express Bus and transfer to Zhonghe Xinlu Line, total traveling time about 29 minutes; 3. Travel on Bus 612, total traveling time 40 minutes. Previous 5284 website would only provide the distance by walking and number of bus stops before arrival in destination: 1. Travel on Bus 612 and get off at China Youth Corps after passing 20 bus stops; 2. Travel on Bus 669 and get off at Dongxin Road after passing 4 bus stops, and walk for 12 meters to get on Bus 279, and get off at Hsing Tian Temple after passing 10 bus stops. The transportation routes recommended on the new website will save passengers about 12 minutes as compared with the older version. The recommended transportation routes can be printed out for reference.

On the new 5284 website, Taiwan Railway is a new option in addition to bus and MRT. The system is automatically connected to Taiwan Railway train schedule, and will provide passengers more transportation options. Other than that, there have been 1,592 low-floor buses in Taipei City. To meet the needs of people with physical and mental disabilities, the elderly and parents using strollers, the option, “low-floor bus”, is also available. When this option is clicked, the system will only recommend transportation routes with low-floor buses only (ie. Other buses are not taken into account, and bus routes with only some buses are low-floor will not be displayed).
According to the Taipei City Public Transportation Office, the 5284 Website is mainly for PC, but if used on tablet computers, some functions of GIS map are restricted on iOS and Android platforms that items cannot be dragged or clicked. However, the searching function is not affected. The office will work on the feasibility to use the map on tablet computers.

The new 5284 Website is put on the Internet for test on January 17. User’s feedback will be collected during the trial period, and future revision will be made based on collected feedback. The older website will still be available. To give any comments or suggestions, simply click on the “Feedback” on the new website.

2013-01-17