I can definitely see how Taipei would have been a nightmare to travel around in before the MRT was built. The first line opened in 1996, with most of the current system open by 2000 (though they keep expanding it – see their expansion plans). About 4 years ago the metro was flooded after a tsunami; the Taipei Main Station was under 2m of water and it took 3 months to restore the system to normal.
The MRT is very user- (and tourist-) friendly:
- It’s fast, clean, safe and orderly
- Virtually all signs have English below the Mandarin
- Station names are listed in Mandarin and Pinyin (i.e. western letters) everywhere
- Announcements are made in Mandarin (and Taiwanese and Hakka) and English
- Fares are distance-based, ranging from NT$20/US$0.70 to NT$65/US$2.25
- The EasyCard is a smart-chip credit-card sized (but thin) pass you buy at vending machines, for either NT$300/US$10 or NT$500/$17, of which NT$100/US$3.50 is a deposit on the card.
- You can use machines to check the balance and add cash value to the card
- At the end of your trip, you return the card to a kiosk or attendant and get back your NT$100 deposit plus any remaining unused value
- Using an EasyCard gives a discount (20% I think) on the normal fares – so a short NT$20/US$0.70 ride is only NT$16/US$0.55!
- To pay for a ride, you tap the card on a reader when entering the station, and again on exit; both times it shows you your balance, and on exit it shows the fare that was calculated. No need to figure out yourself how much to pay
- The EasyCard is much easier than the token, where you figure out your fare, put your money in a machine, and get a token that you then use on entry/exit (and it keeps the token on exit)
- They even have break-a-bill machines (e.g. for an NT$1000/US$35 bill from the ATM, you get 3 choices, of which the most convenient for me was 1xNT$500, 4xNT$100 and 2xNT$50 coins
- The washrooms are very clean, and are often both inside and outside the paid zone
- There is no eating or drinking in the paid zone (though water bottles seem ok)
- The subway car door locations are painted on the platform, sometimes with form-a-line here indicators at busier stations
- Transfers between subway lines have easy to follow signs (again, in Mandarin and English)
- They are still expanding the system, eventually all the way to Taoyuan (airport TPE, which was almost an hour away by bus)
- Exits are lettered/numbered for convenience (some larger multi-line stations can have 20 exits!)
- Nice big area maps by the exits (only thing missing was a scale!)
- You can also use your EasyCard at some retailers, like 7-11
Another useful feature of the metro is the nearly-free sightseeing provided by the above ground portions (a trick I’ve used in other cities like Bangkok):
- The entire brown line (except around the local Songshan airport station)
- The red line north of Yuanshan (inc. the Shilin night market and all the way to Danshui/Tamshui)
- Spur line Beitou – Xinbeitou (“new Beitou”) i.e. for the hot springs
- Spur line Qizang – Xiaobitan (near the southern end of the green line, a few stops before Xindian)
In particular, you see different neighbourhoods, and various jungly hills right on the edge of town.
I did in fact pass through every single station on the network (though I may have forgotten some minor above ground portion).