"Mostly MRT"; The Monster

Below's an email I wrote, entitled "Mostly MRT". You'll find it very long and detailed, mostly unabridged, not broken down (à la I Corinthians/II Corinthians :).

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Hey,

It's been going good here. I spent a few days walking around, finding the school, looking at the housing listings on the school bulletin board.

The metro here is really impressive. The stations are all big and air-conditioned, with escalators and elevators. There are big maps on the walls oriented to where you're standing, so that you can find your way to places outside of the station. There are also pamphlets at an information stand, but the good english-language maps were always out, so it took me a while before I got one and could figure out where I was going.

The ticketing's very easy. You can buy a ticket from a wall machine using a map that lists the fares to each location. One-way fares start at twenty New Taiwan dollars, and going most places won't get higher than NT$35. That's equivalent to US$0.6-US$1. You insert and get back your ticket at the turnstile. You also need to insert your ticket to exit. When you get to your destination and the ticket's spent, it just keeps the ticket.

You can also get an EasyCard, which is faster and easier. It's shaped like a credit card and you don't need to swipe it through anything. All you have to do is pass it within 5cm over a sensor to register it. Lots of people just leave it in their purses and wallets and hold those up to the sensor instead of getting it out of their bags.

Same thing for exiting, and the amount's automatically deducted. When you run low, there are EasyCard value-adding machines by the ticketing wall. You can add with either cash or debit card, in Chinese or English. There's a 20% discount with EasyCard to encourage use.

Overhead displays on the ticketing level tell the time till each train's arrival so you know if you have to run. The other overhead signs are really clear, so transfers or finding the bathroom are very simple. There's also a board for people getting off the trains telling them which exit to take to get to where they're going fastest. Buses from the subway, usually NT$15, are free if you've ridden the MRT in the last two hours.

The MRT trains are fast and frequent. When they're approaching, floor lights flash beyond the yellow line. The trains must be computer controlled, because they always stop in the exact same spot. There are lines painted on the floor to guide the formation of lines during busy times.

The cars are all connected on the inside, so you can see from end to end. The ride is really smooth compared to NYC. There's no klackety-klack on the rails. There's also a NT$1500 (US$45) fine for smoking, drinking, or eating (including chewing gum) within the MRT, so everything is really clean. Even outside the subway, there's hardly any gum on the ground.

Outside, the traffic is really bad. I haven't seen traffic jams, but there are just a lot of vehicles, all of the time. I heard that Taiwan has 1300 vehicles per square mile--20 times that of the U.S. Most people here ride motor scooters instead of cars. The cars here don't look different at all, but all of the vans or trucks are small Isuzus and the vans are very mini. I don't know the gas prices here, but they are higher. I've only seen a couple SUVs.

There don't seem to be any rules for the scooters. I've seen four people on one scooter, dogs between peoples' legs, and really big loads strapped onto the backs of the scooters. Scooters and bicycles are allowed on the sidewalks. The buildings usually overhang half the sidewalk where the people walk in the shade. When the scooters take the sidewalk, they usually ride on the outside of the pillars where they park. Usually. They still race down the inside sidewalks all the time. They're comfortable coming quite close to people at high speeds. They even go the wrong way down one-way side streets.

It's OK though. The traffic lights give the same amount of time on the crosswalks as the traffic. Instead of a 'Walk' signal, there's a little walking guy animated in green LCDs. When time gets low, the animation starts flashing and the guy speeds up into a run. Also, above him is a timer display that shows a countdown of the number of seconds left for crossing. On alleys I've seen it as low as seven seconds. Big boulevards get over ninety. Lots of big intersections also have tunnels going underneath or sky walks above the street so people can get to all of the corners without having to wait for traffic.

Though it's not hard to get around, all the traffic makes the air pretty bad. Taipei's located in a natural basin, actually used to be a lake, then volcanism pushed up the mountains around it even more, so it traps the smog. After a day of walking in it, your thought feels a bit scratchy. Some of the scooter-riders wear masks against the pollution.

Everything is really fast-developing. The city was only a fishing town a hundred and twenty years ago. Twenty-five years ago there were no scooters and everybody rode bicycles. Now it has the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101, named for the number of stories it has. And this week bullet trains from Japan capable of going 300km/h arrived. They'll allow trips between Taipei and the second-biggest Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung in ninety minutes instead of the current six hours.

I'll write later about food and where I'm living,

love,
laszlo