Getting around Taipei can be quick and convenient with the Taipei Metro, also known as the MRT. You can easily check the distance and how much time it will take to travel between stops from the MRT map. But that’s not all the map can do; you can also use it to measure how many calories you can burn by riding a bike from one station to another.
Cycling has become popular in Taiwan in the last few years. Many cities in Taiwan offer bicycle-sharing services, such as the YouBike system in Taipei. YouBike stations can be easily found nearby most MRT stations, offering people an alternative way to travel the city.
According to data from Taiwan’s Health Promotion Administration, an adult who weighs 70 kilograms — the average weight for Taiwanese men — can burn 588 calories cycling for one hour at a speed of 20 kilometers per hour. With this information and after obtaining the distance between each stops we can calculate how much time it will take to ride a bike from one stop to another and how many calories one can burn during the trip.
Here is an infographic on how many calories you can burn by riding bikes if you weigh around 70 kilograms:
If you weigh around 55 kilograms — the average weight for Taiwanese women — you can burn 462 calories if you ride a bike for an hour at a speed of 20 kilometers per hour:
Through the calorie-burning metro map, you can also calculate how many stops you have to ride in order to burn a particular dish or meal. For this infographic, we used Taiwan’s popular “bubble tea” — a drink made by mixing black tea with non-dairy creamer or milk and adding tapioca — and french fries as an example. As one of the most popular drinks in Taiwan, one serving of bubble tea contains 650 calories in average, and a serving of french fries contains about 470 calories.
So how many stops do you have to ride in order to fully burn off a cup of bubble tea or a pack of fries?
Editor: Olivia Yang
