by Ruby Dalmer
When people talk about Taiwan, one of the first words that comes to mind is convenience. Hidden deeper within this land of convenience is another defining characteristic of the island: its deep love for cycling. Combine both of these things and you have what I argue should be considered the world’s best bike share service: the glorious YouBike. YouBiking is one of the greatest highlights of international student life at NCCU. In this love letter to YouBiking, I’m going to convince you why…
▲View from NCCU dorms
First, some history. In 2006, a prototypical YouBike was launched as the Taipei Bike Sharing System. At the time, this made Taipei the world’s 100th city to have a bike sharing system. The project was first developed and operated by the Taipei City Government in partnership with the Giant Group — the parent company of Taiwan’s own bike manufacturer behemoth, GIANT.
The YouBike team channelled a quintessentially Taiwanese form of ingenuity and came up with a creative and tremendously clever bike share scheme.
Firstly, their partnership with GIANT helped them prioritise high quality bikes — something other cities were lacking. YouBikes were designed to mimic the same quality level as GIANT bikes — featuring things like multiple gears, adjustable seats, and wheels appropriate for people of all shapes and sizes.
The design of the bikes themselves are also smartly built to withstand frequent use. Each YouBike serves an average of 12 people per day. This is 2-3 more times than equivalent share bike systems in places like London, New York, and Paris. Most other bicycles are only designed to average just one to two times daily use.
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The affordability of YouBikes cannot be understated. The price of renting YouBike in Taipei City and most other cities is just TWD 10 per 30 minutes for the first 4 hours — just $2.40 USD. And the best part is that the first 30 minutes are completely free!
These smart moves paid off — and the orange and white YouBike 1.0 models quickly became a Taipei city staple. Just 4 years after YouBike’s first rollout, it reached an annual revenue of 3.1 million USD and a 97% user satisfaction rate — virtually unheard of in other parts of the world!
But these 1.0 YouBikes still encountered the issue of the “last mile problem” — where a lack of station density still resulted in people having to walk sizable distances in between returning their bikes and reaching their destination. To address this issue, the thinner, yellower YouBike 2.0 was launched in 2020.
Instead of the traditional wire-based setup that can take up lots of space, YouBike 2.0 uses solar panels as their electrical source and is much more compact as a result. And they even introduced an e-bike model too — for people going longer distances or requiring assistance with pedalling.
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YouBike has now become so popular they have expanded into 9 major cities across Taiwan. February 2023 recorded a total of 1,582 YouBike 1.0 rental stations and 5,246 YouBike 2.0 rental stations across Taiwan, with a total of 653 million rentals. In Taipei, you are never further than a 5-7 minute walk from a YouBike station.
You can even return YouBikes between cities — meaning some brave cyclists have gone on longer, more gruelling cycle missions across the island. One man cycled around the entire perimeter of Taiwan on the back of a trusty YouBike. Another man traversed the treacherous ‘Route 14’ — taking his humble YouBike up elevations over 3000 metres above sea level!
One of the coolest things about YouBikes is that they create a mutually beneficial feedback loop — they are good for cities as much as they are good for the people living in them.
Once YouBike began to take off, 15% of YouBike’s annual profits began to be redirected back into the city government’s budget for infrastructure development. In this way, the service leads to greater citizen satisfaction with their cities, and this use in turn contributes to improved cities at a societal scale.
They also promote environmentally friendly cities with healthy, active, and most importantly, happy people. In the newly voted “happiest place in Asia”, Taiwan’s YouBike service is designed for the greatest common denominator of people. I have seen YouBike riders ranging from children as young as 7 years old to elderly people in their mid-80s.
▲15% of YouBike’s annual profits began to be redirected back into the city government’s budget for infrastructure development.
At NCCU, YouBiking is a major part of campus life. Especially if you live in the university dorms, life can sometimes feel slightly inconvenient — feeling so far from the heart of vibrant Taipei’s city centre. But one silver lining of living slightly out of the main city is it’s location right along the Jingmei River (景美溪)!
The river runs along the eastern side of the campus and flows right through Taipei City. Jingmei connects to Xindian River (新店溪), which is itself part of the larger Tamsui River (淡水河) system that flows through Taipei and out to the sea. This means you can follow the river all the way to Tamsui — around 35km from campus!
▲NCCU river view from the dorms
The riverside parks and the bike paths that connect them are a crown jewel of Taipei City life. By living next to the river, it is so easy to pick up a YouBike from NCCU and explore the city – riverside style. This is one of my favourite things to do in Taipei.
My friends and I love to clear our minds by getting on a bike and soaking up these atmospheric riverside parks.
My personal favourite way to spend a Sunday centres completely around trailing the river on a YouBike. I first bike from NCCU along the river to the Yonghe Bridge Flea Market. Then I like to follow the river further to Da’an Park — to go to the flower market or have a picnic with a friend — and then finish by biking along the river back to campus. Highly recommend!
Many of my favourite memories of my Taipei chapter involve whizzing around the city on a YouBike with friends – zipping from place to place. From an intrepid coastal jaunt to more cosmopolitan endeavors, YouBikes have been a faithful adventure companion.
▲me on a YouBike
I’ve spent a weekend YouBiking around the coast in Keelung – exploring abandoned buildings and parking by the ocean to have a quick dip. Conversely, I’ve also had the quintessentially Taipei experience of trying to weave a YouBike alongside giggling friends between busy crowds in the city centre – special mention to biking in Ximen, Zhongshan, or Zhongxiao Fuxing here…
A common international student experience at NCCU is unexpectedly developing a burning passion for YouBiking. Compared to our home countries, you just can’t beat the affordability, convenience, and unbridled fun of biking your way through Taipei City.
Gemma, an international student from the USA echoes this sentiment. In her words, “I didn’t think I’d ever fall in love with biking but I did. I never pay because usually I’m only riding for less than 30 minutes (100% free) and it’s just so convenient. It’s cheaper than the MRT and often actually faster too. It makes me feel like I can be so mobile. It’s beautiful”.
Something that struck Gemma was how unique attitudes to public goods are in Taiwan. “Other places don’t have the infrastructure or social attitude to have the shareable kind [of bikes]— not a lot of countries outside Asia have that kind of respect culture around public property”.
▲YouBikes in Taipei
She also highlighted the high number of active elders you see on YouBikes in Taiwan — “It’s awesome to see older people finding community on the bikes in those physical activities too. I hope I’m like that with my friends when we’re older”.
Mateo, an international student from Guatemala also shares this passion for YouBiking. As he says, “it gives me extra motivation to go somewhere because I feel good doing exercise too. I try to go at sunset along the river — to combine enjoying beautiful things with improving my health”.
Mateo mirrored Gemma’s awe at how unique Taiwan’s approach to bike sharing is compared to the rest of the world. In his words, “coming from my country, making things like this available and accessible for everybody sounds almost idealistic and utopian”.
Friends and family who have come to visit from New Zealand also go home raving about the beauty of YouBiking. Isla, my friend who visited Taipei in February 2025, falls into this category.
In Isla’s words, “that day we were in Taipei biking around the riverside was just euphoric. I was on top of the world. We biked for like 3 hours and it was like $3NZD”.
She continues, “you would just never be able to do something like that in New Zealand. The bikes would be vandalised and it would be so expensive that it just wouldn’t be worth it”.
▲the beautiful View of river from NCCU dorms at night
As a policy advisor working for the New Zealand government, she was quick to point out the ingenuity of YouBike’s public service. “It is such a genius infrastructure idea. It adds something fun to do in a city, it’s an effective mode of transport, and it adds character to a city — a unique offering of Taipei”.
With fans in Taiwan and abroad, YouBike has achieved a truly impressive feat — they have invented a system that works so well, the need to own your own bicycle has been rendered effectively obsolete. YouBike has considered every single pain point of owning a bike — from maintenance costs to bike parking — and overcome them to produce a world-leading package of convenience.
This people-oriented policy improves mental and physical health, is kind to the environment, and even helps invest in public infrastructure. It is an incredible example of how pro-people policy can have positive flow-on effects to the whole society.
▲Pretty light view from NCCU dorms
