The Taiwan Railway Administration has completed its evaluation of the test to allow bagged bikes on trains (Here is the previous post about the evaluation), and issued a press release with the new regulations on Oct 31 (pdf-file). It's all in Chinese, so here is a summary of the new regulations.
Beginning on Nov 1, it is allowed to travel with a bike in a bike bag on the Ziqiang class express trains. The 13th car of these trains will be designated to travelers traveling with a bagged bike. That car is where the bike should be, and that's also the car where anyone traveling with a bike should sit.
There is no mention of whether an extra fee will be charged for traveling with a bike, nor does it say whether it will be necessary ro reserve a seat. Furthermore, in the article I referred to in the previous post on this issue, TRA staff seemed to be planning to rebuild cars for the Juguang class express trains so that it would be possible to travel with bikes on those trains also, but as of now, the press release only mentions Ziqiang trains.
It would be great if they would also allow travel on Juguang trains, because the overnight from Taipei to Taidong is a Juguang train. We used that a few times before the TRA started regulating this kind of travel because we could leave late Sunday night, save a night of hotel cost and have a full couple days of riding. Now we'll have to take a day off work for traveling time if we want to do the same thing since we have to leave earlier in the day. But hopefully Juguang trains will be added since the TRA Mechanical Engineering Department said in August that it would need more time to adapt Juguang cars to fit the new regualtions.
This news is of course most interesting for travel along Taiwan's east coast, since on the west coast down to Gaoxiong, we simply get on the high speed train. A bit more expensive, but fast and completely hassle free.
Technorati tags: Taiwan, Taipei, biking in Taipei, biking, biking tours, cycling
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The Taipei City Government defends its clampdown on bicycle parking according to today's Taipei Times. It's removing bikes parked on sidewalks or along red lines and charge owners a NT$100 removal fee. The fine should be NT$300 per violation according to municipal regulations, but the city wants to play it nice and promote its policy rather than issue fines.