Department of Information and Tourism, Taipei City Government

The first bus of the Taipei-Hualien bus service departed from Nangang Bus Station at 16:00 on January 6. The bus service bound for Taipei-Hualien and vice versa is provided by the Taipei Bus and Ubus, respectively, around the clock, serving approximately 1,500 passengers daily.

Buses for both routes depart from the Nangang Bus Station in Taipei City, heading to Xincheng, Beipu and Hualien Station via the improved Suhua Highway. A single journey takes about 200 minutes, injecting additional transit resources between Taipei City and Hualien. In order to encourage passengers to make use of the bus service, both bus operators are offering a 50% fare discount during the early stages of the highway’s opening.

According to the Taipei City Public Transportation Office (PTO), Nangang is an important area of the East District Gateway Project, therefore the intercity bus services bound for Hualien all depart from Nangang Bus Station, taking advantage of the complex that integrates TRA train station, THSR station and MRT allowing passengers to quickly transfer to other public transport systems in order to reach all corners of Taipei City and western Taiwan.

After arriving at the Nangang Bus Station, passengers may purchase the ticket at the ticketing and information counter before heading to the platform for embarkation. In particular, Taipei Bus 1071 stops at platform 1, and Ubus 1663 stops at platform 3. During the early stages of its operations, both bus operators are offering tickets at half price; in other words, the bus fare from Taipei to Hualien only costs NT$200 (NT$170 and NT$205 discounted price for 4-row and 3-row seats, respectively), which is considerably cheaper than TRA’s Puyuma Express (NT$419).

The PTO pointed out that the Nangang Bus Station is the easternmost bus station of Taipei City, servicing passengers from Neihu, East District and Xizhi. Considering that the bus station is in the vicinity of National Freeway No. 1, No. 3, and No. 5, it is designed as the primary bus station connecting Taipei City to eastern Taiwan. Since being inaugurated in 2017, the bus service routes to and from Toucheng, Yilan, Luodong and Suao have been made available at the bus station. Together with the Hualien route that has recently been launched, the intercity bus service to eastern Taiwan will become more comprehensive.

With the successive completion of several major public construction projects in Nangang, the demand for transit resources is also increasing, therefore the PTO plans to introduce more intercity bus services to the Nangang Bus Station in order to cater to the public’s transport needs.