Walk the streets of Kaohsiung, and you will see that motorcycles and scooters are a fact of life there. As Taiwan's second-largest city, Kaohsiung has worked hard to update its image. In the past two years, elegant, non-polluting bicycles have become more commonplace. 

The secret to the transformation is YouBike 2.0.

Kaohsiung introduced YouBike 2.0 to its citizens in 2019, replacing the original C-Bike, which had served Kaohsiung for 11 years.

In the two years since YouBike 2.0 set up shop, it has served an average of one million riders every month. That's more than double the number of C-Bike users back in the day. Kaohsiung has 1,086 YouBike stations, 11 more than Taipei.

The “Kaohsiung” Facebook fan page conducted an informal survey last April, in which YouBike 2.0 was voted the most impressive addition to Kaohsiung’s infrastructure in the last ten years, beating out Kaohsiung Light Rail, the Kaohsiung Music Center, and the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts.

From underdog to '15-minute city'

Despite its resounding success in Kaohsiung, YouBike General Manager John Ho (何友仁) says that in the beginning, no one believed YouBike could become a thing in Kaohsiung.

Detractors highlighted Kaohsiung's sweltering climate and abundance of motorbikes. YouBike might succeed elsewhere, they argued, but not here.

Perhaps they had a point. According to a survey by Taiwan's Ministry of Transportation and Communications, for every hundred people in Kaohsiung, there are 75.5 scooters and motorcycles—the highest among Taiwan's six special municipalities.

In spite of this, Ho was adamant that YouBike should enter the Kaohsiung market. He moved to Kaohsiung and lived there for four and a half months to oversee operations. After YouBike won the government tender, he sent four teams of investigators all over the city to survey sites for possible YouBike stations. YouBike successfully reached the goal of erecting 316 new stations within three months.

Quick deployment coupled with the "ride for free" trial run was what set YouBike 2.0 apart. On average, each YouBike is ridden 3.5 times a day—higher than the forecasted three times per day. The percentage of users who transfer from or to another public transport using iPASS is 21%, compared to just 9% during the C-Bike era.

The success of YouBike 2.0 has led Kaohsiung to reevaluate why it has such a high concentration of motorcycles and scooters.

"In the past, people opted to commute on motorcycles because they didn't have to cover such a large distance," says Shu-Chuan Chang (張淑娟), Director-General at Kaohsiung's Transportation Bureau. 

Because Kaohsiung's residential and business districts are highly integrated, it usually doesn't take long to commute. Unlike cities such as Taipei, citizens in Kaohsiung are generally able to go home for lunch during workdays. Hence the popularity of motorcycles. 

YouBike 2.0 has replaced motorcycles as the transport of choice. Some workers are even riding YouBikes to meetings at other offices.

Chang feels that Kaohsiung is on its way to embodying the ideal of the "15-minute city"—a city where residents can complete all of their daily activities within 15 minutes of walking or biking. In addition to elevating the citizens' quality of life, YouBike 2.0 is also low-carbon and eco-friendly. YouBikes can be used for just about anything that the people of Kaohsiung might need.

Currently, Kaohsiung has made sure that most of its residents can reach a YouBike 2.0 station within 15 minutes of walking. This makes commuting much easier.

According to a survey conducted by YouBike this year, 12% of Kaohsiung residents are using YouBike 2.0 to replace their cars, while nearly 40% are using YouBike as substitutes for motorcycles or scooters. YouBike and Kaohsiung were able to accomplish all of this in two years. Just imagine what they might accomplish in the future. 

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Translated by Jack Chou
Edited by TC Lin
Uploaded by Penny Chiang