You are looking at a picture of the High Speed Rail. I think i've actually talked about this before. It's the bullet train which goes from Taipei in the north, through the center of the country, down to Kaohsiung which is the big city in the south of Taiwan. Along it's way it stops at a few major locations, Taoyuan, a suburb of sorts of Taipei, Hsinchu, an area which has a huge amount of technology companies, Taichung, the big city in the center of the country, and Tainan, a very popular old style city.
Travel has always been a problem in Taiwan, with a drive from north to south which should take under 3 hours, taking more than 5 hours due to traffic. Buses take forever, and the normal trains also go slowly and make a lot of stops. So in a way the bullet train does solve this, as it goes from north to south in 90 minutes.
The thing is though, it doesn't really solve anything. This is because of a few issues. First it is "expensive" a one way ticket from one end to the other being about 30 bucks. which yes is pretty cheap, but when the regular train is like nine bucks, and the bus is even cheaper, the bullet train comparatively is quite expensive. Its hard to convince people to spend over three times as much money, especially when they have been taking the regular train or bus for years.
The second problem is the locations of the stops. for a few of the cities, it's not actually in the city itself. So while you can take the bus or regular train and be right in the city you arrive at, for the bullet train you usually end up outside of the city and have take a shuttle bus that can be a ride of over half an hour. And remember because of the size of taiwan, a half an hour for a Taiwanese person is like what two hours would be to an American.
The final problem is just which cities it goes to. Yes taoyuan and hsinchu are very important cities and people almost everyday go back and forth between them and Taipei. but they are only 30 minutes at most away by bus, and the bus is only 1 dollar. Taichung is in the middle, and while the bullet train is faster, it's still not that much faster than the bus. The real time benefit is when you are going to Kaohsiung, but the problem is that a lot of people want to continue on to Kenting, a popular beach area on the south tip of Taiwan. However to get there from the bullet train you have to take the subway through the city and then take a bus. So people would rather just take a bus the whole way, or really if they are on a trip with friends, just drive.
All that being said, it is good to have the bullet train and people do take it. Yes it's not really worth it in most situations, but it is good to at least have the option. I think that just having the bullet train has inspired more people to travel around taiwan, and more people to commute further to work, even if they choose not to use the bullet train. As the title alludes to, every time i ask somebody "oh how are you getting there? super train?" they always reply "bus."
And yes the painting on the side of it is for Adventure Time. There has been a push recently to sell Adventure Time items in Taiwan. Not because people have seen the show, but because the characters are "cute." Because honestly i have not met anybody here who has seen the show. But really why would they? Adventure Time is solely for 24 year old white american/canadian potheads.
