 Hey there, and welcome to RM Transit. In today's video I'm going to be explaining one of the most interesting metro networks not just in Asia, but in the whole world. The Taipei Metro is really young, starting service just in 1996, and now has over 130 stations, with many more on the way. The city also manages this despite a number of unique features that often connected to other systems in Asia, which it's clearly both influenced and been influenced by. I'm working on a lot more explained videos this year, so please leave a comment down below of your favorite system I haven't covered and why I should cover it, it just might happen. Also, a huge shout out to Taipei Urbanism on Twitter for all of their help with this video. Go check them out. So with that, let's get into seeing what makes this great network tick. If you're not already, consider supporting me on Patreon or via YouTube Memberships to help me bring the world more explanations of our greatest transit networks and to get special bonuses like a monthly call with yours truly and early video access. As it turns out, today's video is my 20th explained video, so if you haven't seen the others go check them out. This is Taipei. Well, actually, this is Taipei, and this is New Taipei. This is the Tamsui River, and these are the hills and mountains that hem the city into the north, southeast, and west. This is Xinyi, which is the primary CBD where the famous Taipei 101 Tower is located, though the city does have several CBDs as with many cities in Asia. Taipei has two airports, Songshan, which is a relatively small airport with a single runway for some domestic and short international flights embedded within the urban area itself, and Taluan International Airport, which is a much larger dual runway airport with a large central terminal located closer to Taluan, west of the mountains to the west of the city. With the general overview out of the way, let's get into the metro. The system currently has 150 stations, but over 7 metro lines. I'll go through the lines in the order of opening of their first segment, and I suggest paying special attention to the way the lines mostly form a grid within Taipei itself before traveling out in various directions and outlying areas and new Taipei. The first line is the Brown Line, which is a 25 kilometer 24 station line. The line runs from the Taipei Zoo in the south, near the mountains, north-south across the city, serving Songshan Airport to the mountains north of the city, and then east into the valley ending near the Nangang Exhibition Center. The next line to appear was the 30.2 kilometer 29 stop Red Line, which first opened one year after the Brown Line in 1997. The line runs from the east end of central Taipei to the city's north via Taipei Station, where connections to the Taiwan Railway Administration and high-speed rail services can be made, along a former rail line which is responsible for its somewhat winding right-of-way. The red line also features a pink branch line known as the Xinbei Toe Line. This line features one stop and connects the red line north of Beitou Station, and serves a hot spring and residential district. One year later in 1998, the green line opened, and it's now a 22.5 kilometer 21 station line. The services, like the red line, start in the east end of central Taipei, with transfers available to TRA rail services, and continues west to serve the center before turning southwards. The green line also features a lime green branch line known as the Xiaobitan Line. The line features one stop, has with the equivalent on the red line, and connects to the green line south of Qizong Station, and serves a rail yard, which is partially covered with a number of residential towers, as seen on the MTR in Hong Kong. That same year on Christmas Eve, the orange line, a 29 kilometer 26 station line, opened running from the mountains of the southwest of the city, north through the center, and then west across the river into New Taipei, where the line splits into two branches, one which runs into the northwest, while the other runs to the southwest. A year later in 1999, the blue line opened, running from east of the center at the Nangang Exhibition Center, through to Taipei Main Station, via Nangang, which, along with Taipei Main Station, provides transfers to TRA and Taiwan High Speed Rail services. From here, the line runs south and southwest across the river into New Taipei City, which should continue southwest through. The blue line has 23 stations, over 26.5 kilometers of line. The newest line in the Taipei Metro system, and the first new line in roughly 20 years, is the Yellow Circular Line, which opened at the end of January 2020, and is decidedly not a circle yet. The line has 15.5 kilometers of track, with 14 stations, and is entirely in New Taipei, running circumferentially from roughly west to south of the city center. The final rapid transit line operating in Taipei is not actually part of Taipei Metro, but Taluon Metro. This line is the Taluon Airport MRT, which has the colors blue and purple, and runs from a new terminal at Taipei Main Station, west and southwest, through New Taipei, continuing to Taluon International Airport, and then south to Taluon itself. The line has two levels of service reminiscent of the Hong Kong Airport Express line, with the ability to check bags in the city center, and local, as well as express trains, that will get you to the airport in 35 minutes. Frequencies on the two lines are at most every 15 minutes, but this could easily increase in the future to a more metro-quality experience. The line is a total of 51 kilometers long, with 21 stations. Now Taipei also has some other higher order transit services. For one, there's the Mao Kong Gondola, which connects at the southern terminus of the Brown Line and provides 4 stations along a 4 kilometer route that provides access to the mountains to the south of the city, a number of temples, as well as parts of the Taipei Zoo. The service opened in 2007. There's also the Danhai Light Rail, which is a muted red color, as well as a muted orange. This is a small network of light rail services that connect to the north end of the red line and serve 14 stops through the Tamsui District, which it runs express to on a fully elevated alignment. There are two different branches, one to the north and one to the waterfront to the south, as well as a lovely green track. Of course, as you'd expect from a city as prosperous as Taipei, there are many planned expansion projects, though only one of them currently in the works extends an original high capacity line. The first project to mention is the extension of the Taoyuan Airport MRT to Zhongli Station. This extension will be about 2 kilometers long and will contain two stations, including a terminus which enables transfers to TRA rail services. This project is expected to be completed in the late 2020s and will finally provide coverage to this incredibly dense part of Taoyuan, in addition to constructing a huge transit complex with office and retail towers on top of the station. The red line is also being extended one stop east, in a project set to open sometime next year. At the same time, the circular line is also being expanded in two different phases. Currently under construction are the north and south portions of the line, which are 14.5 and 5.5 kilometers long, with 12 and 6 stations respectively. There's also a planned final eastern section to close the loop, which will have 10 stations on 13 kilometers of track. The second phase should be complete by the late 2020s, while the final phase should be completed in the early 2030s. A new line currently being constructed is the Ongkeng Light Rail, which, and I'm not kidding here, is colored khaki. This line will extend from the southwestern corner of this circle line, 7.5 kilometers to the southwest. Much like the Dan Highlight Rail, the densest sections of the line are elevated, while it travels at ground level further outside of the city. The line has 9 station stops, and should open sometime this year. A new metro line called the San Ying Line is colored light blue, and will extend southwest from the southern terminus of the blue line to connect to the future expanded Taoyuan Metro system. This line will feature 12 stations, over 14 kilometers of track, and is set to open next year in 2023. Both the San Ying Line and the Ongkeng Line will be operated by New Taipei Metro. The final under construction new metro line is known as the Wanda Line. This line runs from the southwest of the city center at the interchange between the red and green lines, southwest through New Taipei, beyond the Yellow Line. The line will be colored light green, and will have 9 stations over 9.5 kilometers of track. In the future, it will also be extended northwest through New Taipei to the Orange Line. The Wanda Line is set to open in 2025. Much like the red and green lines, the Wanda Line will feature a one station branch line as part of it. Now one of the most fun parts of the Taipei Metro is its varied rolling stock, so let's talk about that. As you'll know if you've watched my video on Val, Taipei's brown line uses Val trains from both Matra and Bombardier, known as Val 256 and Inobia 256 respectively. These four-car trains with two doors per side per car are roughly 52 meters long and 2.56 meters wide, and run with 750 volt third rail power and full automation. Taipei Metro considers these trains medium capacity. On the circular line, much more standard trains are used. The trains are four cars long, for a total of 68 meters in length, with three doors per side per car, and are 2.65 meters wide. They're based on the Hitachi Rail Idli driverless metro platform seen in Copenhagen and other cities, and run on 750 volt DC third rail. The interior of these trains features fully longitudinal seating. That said, some of the trains were actually made domestically by TRSC, the Taiwan Rolling Stock Company. Now, on the high capacity lines, namely the red, green, blue, and orange, a common train profile is used which has been built for many manufacturers. Trains are 141 meters long by 3.2 meters wide, and feature four doors per side per car. They're powered by 750 volt DC third rail, as with other lines. Quite uniquely, high capacity rolling stock on the Taipei Metro comes in the form of paired three car sets. As it turns out, the original Taipei high capacity line rolling stock, the C301, is very similar in design to the C151 trains used on the Singapore MRT, which I explained in a previous video. Like the C151, the trains were manufactured by Kawasaki. The trains have mixed seating, and entered service on the high capacity lines in the late 90s. The very similar C321 model was also launched at the end of the 90s on the high capacity lines, but these trains were manufactured by Siemens as part of its modular metro line. Just a few years later in the early 2000s, Siemens produced a few more trains for the system, in the form of the C341, which are highly similar to the C321. In the mid 2000s, the high capacity system added the C371s, which were once again produced by Kawasaki, with special three car sets existing to serve the two short branch lines from the red and green lines. The latest model on Taipei's high capacity lines are the C381, which are also manufactured by Kawasaki, though like the C371, some sets were domestically manufactured by TRSC. The C381 also came with digital screens, which provide wayfinding information, and have the least generic look of all of the high capacity rolling stock. The Tallyon Metro 1000 series trains, which were also manufactured by Kawasaki and TRSC, have a lot of technology in common with the C381 and C371, but are slightly narrower and shorter, and feature only three doors per side per car on four car trains, and have a higher top speed of over 100km per hour. The 1000 series has fully longitudinal seating, appropriate for the local all stop services on the line, and the trains still use third rail, as with other lines in the Taipei Metro system, but have special adaptations for airport travel, as well as enhanced wayfinding such as a diagram of travel times often seen in trains from Japan. There are also the 2000 series trains, which are very similar to the 1000 series but which feature commuter style seating and a purple rather than blue livery. In addition, the express trains feature a fifth car which has five doors on it, and is used to carry baggage from the in town check-in service again just like in Hong Kong. On the Danhai light rail system, there are locally manufactured five segment trams, which are 34.5 meters long by 2.65 meters wide, 100% low floor vehicles which were designed with help from a German engineering firm. These trains also feature off-wire capability for sections of line without 750 volt overhead power line. There are also a number of future rolling stock models set to be used on the Taipei Metro and its connected systems. Phase 2 of the circular line is set to use the Metropolis rolling stock from Alstom, similar to the trains used on the REM in Montreal, but with the same dimensions and power system as the existing circle line trains. The Wanda line is also set to use similar four-car Metropolis trains from Alstom. Meanwhile, the Sanying line, like the original phase of the circular line, is set to use automated trains from Hitachi, however these ones will be two-car sets. The Hong Kong light rail line will use trains very similar to the Danhai light rail, but with further locally manufactured components and a golden color. Now the final portion of the Taipei Metro we need to discuss is its unique features, and there are a lot, so let's dive in. Like other East Asian systems, Taipei Metro has platform screen doors at all stations, but uses a combination of floor-to-ceiling platform doors and half-height platform gates. The system originally didn't have platform doors on the high-capacity lines, but all stations were retrofitted by 2018. Speaking of platform edges, one unique feature of the Taipei Metro, also seen on the Washington Metro, was blinking lights on the platform edge that activated when a train was approaching. Somewhat unlike Singapore, four of Taipei's primary metro lines use the same fundamental train technology. Though the network does have a lot in common with Singapore. For one, the planning of the original four high-capacity lines together enabled a massive three-way cross-platform junction between the orange, red, and green lines, as well as an additional cross-platform transfer between the blue and green lines that I covered in my cross-platform transfer video. That said, while Singapore has tunneled lines further and further in recent years, Taipei has done the opposite, opting for more and more elevated construction. The circular line is mostly elevated, as is the Taluon Airport MRT. Though unlike in many western countries, sound barriers and tunnels are employed extensively to mitigate sound from trains. That said, Taipei is aggressive, running elevated transit through highly dense areas of the city. In fact, part of the circular line even runs elevated with two tracks stacked on top of each other because the streets being operated on are so narrow, and there are adjacent towers. That said, I might actually even say that the amount of elevation could be excessive, since there are often surprisingly indirect alignments used and lots of tight curves. We could certainly learn some lessons from Taipei and Toronto, though, where this is considered too dense to go elevated. Taipei's metro also has another unique feature, consistency. Many metro systems have a mixture of express and local lines, but in Taipei, short of the airport MRT, which isn't actually part of the Taipei Metro, the one kilometer station spacing standard is very well adhered to. Stations are fairly consistent as well, with amenities such as clean restrooms in every single station. On a related note to the consistency is reliability. Taipei Metro is one of the world's most reliable metro systems, with agencies in the region often dispatching personnel to observe the agency's maintenance processes that help it achieve a 99% punctuality rate. Like most East Asian systems, most Taipei Metro stations close by 12.30 at night to allow the system a few hours each day for track maintenance. At the same time, Taipei somewhat uniquely employs so many one-stop branch line stubs that operate as shuttles, often as a useful way to turn tracks into a depot into something useful. I talked about why running shuttles makes sense in my branch line video, but I can't think of another city of Taipei's size that does this so extensively. I think the ultimate thing that makes Taipei's Metro notable, though, is its diversity. If there were a system to teach you about every metro and transit subsystem, this would be it. From automated trains, to trams, with batteries, to gondolas, high-capacity trains, to gadget bonds, to cross-platform interchanges, elevated surface and underground construction, an air rail link with express trains and passing loops with in-town check-in, development on top of rail infrastructure and more. Few cities seem to have taken as many lessons from around the world and combined them in one place. So with that, we have the Taipei Metro. Let me know what you think and what city I should cover next.