Scooter riders in Taipei can now pay NT$400 per month for unlimited parking in all of the city’s parking spaces, the Taipei Parking Management and Development Office said.
Transportation Management Division section chief Lo Chih-hao (羅至浩) on Tuesday said the office has launched two new scooter parking measures to lower expenses for riders.
The city charges NT$20 for scooter parking near 16 designated shopping districts, according to the office’s Web site.
Photo: Tsai Ya-hua, Taipei Times
The monthly parking pass can be purchased by filling out a form on the office’s Web site, Lo said, adding that buyers can pay with cash at designated parking lots or through the Pi mobile wallet app or Autopass.
People who pay digitally are to receive a NT$100 discount, he said.
Passes for the following month would be available to purchase starting from the 25th of each month, Lo said.
The office has discontinued its previous three monthly passes, which allowed unlimited scooter parking in areas near the Neihu Science Park, Songshan Railway Station and Shilin Night Market respectively, he said.
The office also said that starting from Sep. 7, riders would only be charged one parking fee per day, no matter how many places the same scooter is parked.
Parking authorities are to check a scooter’s plate number before issuing a ticket to avoid double billing, Lo said.
The new measures benefit scooter riders, as the monthly pass allows people who ride every day to stop receiving daily bills, while those who only ride occasionally, but travel between areas, would only need to pay one fee instead of NT$20 every time they park in a city space, Taipei Department of Transportation Director Chen Hsueh-tai (陳學台) said.
The policy of not billing electric scooters for parking remains in place as part of the city’s efforts to promote green energy, Lo said.
Until the number of registered electric scooters exceeds 13.5 percent of all registered scooters in the city, electric scooter parking would remain free to encourage people to replace fuel-inefficient scooters with green ones, he said.
The office started charging for scooter parking last year to address the large number of scooters parked on city streets, and started with 16 designated shopping districts, as the first part of a four-stage plan, he said.
The goal is to charge for scooter parking everywhere in the city, he added.
The second stage is to begin on Sept. 7, when the office is to charge for scooter parking in 6,500 spaces near MRT stations from Longshan Temple Station to Kunyang Station on the Bannan Line (Blue Line), Lo said.
Parking spaces in downtown areas along the Tamsui-Xinyi Line (Red Line) would be included by the end of the year, he added.
The third stage would expand paid parking to spaces along main roads in the city, and the fourth phase would add spaces along minor roads to cover all areas in the city, he said.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
‘JOINT SWORD’: Whatever President Lai says in his Double Ten speech, China would use it as a pretext to launch ‘punishment’ drills for his ‘separatist’ views, an official said China is likely to launch military drills this week near Taiwan, using President William Lai’s (賴清德) upcoming national day speech as a pretext to pressure the nation to accept its sovereignty claims, Taiwanese officials said. China in May launched “punishment” drills around Taiwan shortly after Lai’s inauguration, in what Beijing said was a response to “separatist acts,” sending heavily armed warplanes and staging mock attacks as state media denounced newly inaugurated Lai. The May drills were dubbed “Joint Sword — 2024A” and drew concerns from capitals, including Washington. Lai is to deliver a key speech on Thursday in front of the Presidential Office
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Taiwan was listed in 14th place among the world's wealthiest country in terms of GDP per capita, in the latest rankings released on Monday by Forbes magazine. Taiwan's GDP per capita was US$76,860, which put it at No. 14 on the list of the World's 100 Richest Countries this year, one spot above Hong Kong with US$75,130. The magazine's list of the richest countries in the world is compiled based on GDP per capita data, as estimated by the IMF. However, for a more precise measure of a nation's wealth, the magazine also considers purchasing power parity, which is a metric used to