Transport has become a campaign issue in the Zhubei mayoral race, with KMT candidate Wu Hsu-chih singling out the bus system as a waste of resources and bad news for commuters and students, though the county government does not consider the problem so serious.

• An audit report shows that the overlap rate between the stops of Hsinchu County's express buses and Zhubei City's citizen buses exceeds 50 percent, amounting to two sets of buses running along the same road.
• Wu Hsu-chih says there are three problems: duplicated investment of resources, transfers that fail to connect, and a lack of transparent information — issues he raised in an interpellation two years ago.
• Almost no smart bus stop signs are installed near schools, and more than half of all bus stops have no YouBike station within 400 metres, leaving students and transferring passengers worst off.
• He has put forward four reforms: cross-county coordination to consolidate routes, priority installation of smart stop signs at schools and hospitals, filling gaps in YouBike coverage along with transfer subsidies, and adding dedicated school-commute services and reservation buses at peak hours.
• The county government's Transportation Department responded that Zhubei's population and public facilities are concentrated along the same few main roads, so route overlap is a normal phenomenon, and the overlap rate is only one reference point for review.

Outlook: The county government expects to launch a bus network planning project by the end of this year to take fresh stock of routes and service frequencies, and this account will continue to be raised before the election.