Taiwan Getting There and Around: Airports, High Speed Rail and City Transit

The doors of the Taoyuan Airport MRT slide shut and the island begins moving past the window: rice paddies, a gray weather front over the coast, the low green ridge behind Linkou. Thirty-five minutes later you step out beneath Taipei Main Station, and it lands on you that you have crossed a country without opening a car door. Taiwan is the rare place where arrival and transport are the same pleasure. The harbors that British consuls and Qing officials argued over in the 1860s are now the easiest car-free stops on the network, and the whole island is stitched together by rail, metro and bike share.

Three airports do the heavy lifting. Taoyuan International (TPE) handles most long-haul flights and sits about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Taipei. Songshan (TSA) is the city airport, planted inside Taipei on the MRT's Wenhu Line, which makes the trip to Taipei Main Station a 16-minute in-system ride. Kaohsiung International (KHH) serves the south and opens directly onto the metro Red Line at R4. Whichever door you come through, the first transaction is small and painless.

From Taoyuan, the Airport MRT is the default. Express trains reach Terminal 1 in 35 to 36 minutes and Terminal 2 in 39, running every 15 to 30 minutes between 06:00 and 23:00, and the published one-way fare is NT$160 from either terminal. A commuter train covers the same corridor more slowly, stopping at every station. If you are flying home, A1 and A3 offer in-town check-in, so you can drop your bags downtown and spend the afternoon in the city. Taxis wait outside arrivals and take about 40 minutes to central Taipei; they run on the meter, with NT$85 for the first 1.25 kilometers, NT$5 for each additional 200 meters and a NT$20 night surcharge between 23:00 and 06:00.

Kaohsiung is just as straightforward. The Red Line runs from Kaohsiung International Airport (R4) to Kaohsiung Main Station (R11) in about 16 minutes for NT$35, with trains from roughly 05:57 until after midnight. From there the harbor, the old salt warehouses and the light-rail loop along the water are all a short ride away, and you never need to look for parking.

For real distance, the Taiwan High Speed Rail is the spine. It runs 345 kilometers from Nangang in Taipei to Zuoying in Kaohsiung in as little as 1 hour 45 minutes, and standard adult tickets between Taipei and Kaohsiung cost NT$1,490, with business class at NT$1,950. Reserved seats open 28 days ahead. The line's stations are also the gateways to Taichung, Tainan and Chiayi, the jumping-off point for Alishan. Where the high speed rail does not go, the conventional TRA network does: the Taroko Express links Taipei and Hualien in about two hours, hugging cliffs above the Pacific.

In town, fares are pocket change. Taipei's MRT is distance-based, NT$20 to NT$65 a trip, running 06:00 to midnight, and city buses are NT$15 a segment. Buy an EasyCard or iPASS for NT$100 at any station or convenience store and top it up as you go; a metro-to-bus transfer within an hour earns an NT$8 discount. YouBike 2.0 is free for the first 30 minutes for members in Taipei, then NT$10 per 30 minutes within four hours, which turns riverside paths and temple lanes into easy errands. Kaohsiung has its own metro and light rail, and the same stored-value card mostly works there too.

The car-free dividend is the old treaty ports. Tamsui, opened to foreign trade in 1862, is the northern terminus of the Tamsui-Xinyi Line: step off the MRT and walk uphill to Fort San Domingo, which the British took over as their consulate in 1868 and painted red. Keelung, Anping in Tainan and old Takao in Kaohsiung carry the same layered history of customs houses, consulates and harbor warehouses, and each sits within a short walk of a station. You can build an entire island trip around those waterfronts without renting anything at all.

October to April is the sweet spot: cooler days, clearer mountains and cherry blossoms in February and March. May and June bring the plum rains, while July to September is hot, humid and typhoon season, so keep a buffer day around any flight. Complete the free Taiwan Arrival Card online within three days of landing; the paper form ended on October 1, 2025. US, UK and most EU passports enter visa-free for up to 90 days. The fact sheet below collects the fares, hours and distances. Tell ChinaMira your dates and arrival airport, and we will match the Airport MRT or the high speed rail, book the seats and build a car-free Taiwan route that begins the moment the doors open.