For effective control of vehicle emissions in its jurisdiction, the Department of Environmental Protection of the New Taipei City Government, following the applicable regulations and the vehicle control strategies that it has devised, has designed the project for management of motorcycle testing stations, replacement of high pollution vehicles, promotion of electric two-wheeled vehicles and other control measures. The project provides economic incentives to encourage motorcycle or diesel vehicle owners to replace their old vehicles early or install pollution prevention equipment. Guidelines are established for motorcycle testing stations to ensure the testing stations perform motorcycle emission tests accurately. Pollution from motor vehicle emissions will be improved, and the air quality in New Taipei City will become better. The key tasks include: subsidizing replacement of high pollution vehicles, subsidizing electric two-wheeled vehicles, handling reports of highly-polluting vehicles, and managing testing stations. The project is conducted between December 2, 2019 and December 1, 2020.
Following the project execution plan, all tasks were completed in November 2020. Furthermore, to derive more benefits from the project, best practices were identified from past experiences, such as printing vehicle registration report at the supervisory agency and LINE enabled accessible and friendly services. The rejection rate for application to replace highly polluting vehicle was reduced from 12.8% in 2016 to 5.7% in 2020. With regard to testing station management, in order to improve testing station quality, the improvement of common shortcomings was included in permit review guidelines, which facilitated compliance with the review of new testing stations and permit extension applications. Calibration audits of older exhaust analyzers were strengthened to increase test accuracy. In addition, a maximum useful life limit of 15 years was imposed on exhaust analyzers in 2017 to urge 187 testing stations to replace their old exhaust analyzers. Test stations were required to install cameras in order to prevent highly-polluting motorcycles from using illicit methods to pass exhaust inspection. Apart from the foregoing tasks, the replacement of old large diesel vehicles and adjustment/repair of fuel control or installation of diesel particulate filters, a total of 99,906 Phases 1 to 4 motorcycles were retired in 2020 by the end of November, which reduced CO and HC emissions by 1010 tons and 326 tons, respectively. A total of 1,055 Phases 1 to 3 diesel vehicles were also retired, the highest in the last three years.
