page_title: Taipei Joint Bus System
section_title: Ticketing evolution
hierarchical_section_title: Taipei Joint Bus System / History / Ticketing evolution
context_page_description: The Taipei Joint Bus System is a bus system that serves the greater metropolitan area of Taipei, Taiwan. It is administered by the Taipei Joint Bus Service Management Center, the Taipei City Traffic Bureau, and the New Taipei City Traffic Bureau, and is operated by 15 private agencies. It includes the bus systems of Taipei City and New Taipei City, and has a coordinated numbering and fare system.
context_section_description: Each bus operator independently used to issue various types of paper ticket, which were only usable on that specific operator's routes. After the lienying system was implemented, to achieve a unified ticketing system, the unified management centre (聯管中心, liénkuǎn chunghsīn) produced a single unified set of tickets. These consisted of "ordinary tickets", "concessionary tickets" and "student tickets" (registered for and bought at individual schools). When air-conditioned buses went into operation, special (more expensive) tickets were issued for use on these buses. After the lienying system was implemented, and in order to reduce the number of employees, ticket-punchers (conductors) were gradually phased out. Drivers took up the task of punching tickets, (the so-called "one-person serviced bus"). The subsequent decrease in the drivers' work efficiency then led to the scrapping of the "ticket-punching system" in the beginning of 1994; after which, customers paid upon boarding and leaving the bus.
  Later, the private bus companies and transport offices (民營業者與官方單位) made plans for a system where fares would be deducted from a "retained value chip" ticket. After the private bus companies (民營業者) implemented a trial, this retained-value chip fare-deduction system was officially implemented on 1 September 1998. (At first the cash-payment method was entirely scrapped, while later the smart-card and the cash payment system were used together). The chip tickets could be bought with retained values of NT$300 and NT$500. However, the chip tickets could not be integrated with the Taipei Metro magnetic retained-value ticket，had a poor ability to process information, and had a high rate of failure (could not be recognised, or value could not be deducted). Consequently, as RFID technology became more advanced, the bus and MRT both started using the IC Smart card「easycard」. Thus between 2002 and October 2003, the bus chip tickets were phased out as the EasyCard system became prevalent.
caption: Easy Card—Ordinary card