Institute of Transportation, MOTC

        Northern Taiwan comprises the Taipei Metropolitan Area (Taipei City, New Taipei City), Yilan County, Keelung City, Taoyuan City, Hsinchu County, Hsinchu City, and Miaoli County, eight counties and cities in total. The work focus this year is to establish a Northern Taiwan transport demand model and carry out annual supply and demand prediction analysis in the future, based on which functional positioning and review targeting Northern Taiwan’s various transportation systems, the formulation of Northern Taiwan’s overall transportation development strategies, and a deep insight into the issue of supply and demand facing Taipei City-New Taipei City-Taoyuan City, Taipei -Yilan, and Taipei-Keelung can be carried out. The research results are summarized as follows: 1. Future Trip Trends in Northern Taiwan (1) There were a total of 2,365.2 million trips in 2017. However, due to low birth rates and an aging population, the number of trips will drop to 2,057.4 million in 2051. Trip rates will also drop from 1.95 to 1.89. (2) In the future, the elderly population will increase. In 2017, the population of aged above 65 was 1.5 million, accounting for 13% of the total population in Northern Taiwan; by 2051, the population will increase to 4.02 million, accounting for 39% of the total population. (3) The percentage of total trips in the life zones was 93.3% in 2017 and it will drop to 92.9% in 2051. In contrast, the percentage of total trips across life zones will increase from 6.7% to 7.1%. This shows that the boundaries of life zones are getting blurry and trip demand is increasing across life zones. 2. Development Strategies of an Integrated Transportation System in Northern Taiwan (1) It is suggested that elderly transportation services continue to be optimized, including research of elderly travel and transportation behaviors, elderly driver safety management, and barrier-free transportation environment optimization. (2) Enhanced transport management diversion and improve traffic bottlenecks: including continuously promoting railway construction, strengthening the structures of bus network, expanding intelligent transport services, rationalizing usage fee and road pricing, encouraging off-street parking, and enhancing parking management.  (3) The population is concentrated in the core areas. Public construction should focus on the services of emerging development areas connected with surrounding cities: planning services supplemented by rail-based highways, connecting core development areas, and providing urban external demand response services. (4) Continuous improvement on public transportation to increase competitiveness: including improving convenience and competitiveness of public transportation, providing multimodal service, combining traffic information platforms, and improving transfer service and pedestrian environment.