Cyclists around the country enjoyed Car-Free Day yesterday, which gave them a taste of what it was once like when bicycles ruled the road. But just like Cinderella’s ball, the dream ended at midnight. For the rest of the year, cyclists must live in a state of limbo, neither fish nor fowl, without the rights of either pedestrians or vehicles.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) has declared that its Directorate General of Highways “will cooperate in establishing standards for road layouts in Taiwan in which bicycle lanes must be included when building roads as a basis for road construction by all civil engineering departments and companies in future.” But is this kind of blanket policy really what cyclists need?
Bicycle lane planning in Taiwan faces several problems. Traffic layout in urban areas should put people first when prioritizing road use by different kinds of vehicles. Consideration needs to be given to how much space should be allocated for cars and how much for public transport, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians. Existing traffic conditions and volumes of automobile traffic, however, should not be the sole standards for setting road use priorities because circumstances can change.
From a humanistic and environmental point of view, sidewalks for pedestrians should be given top priority, followed by provision for buses, trams and bicycles. In reality, the car remains king of the road. Now the ministry has set a blanket rule based on a fledgling model for urban transport, authorities in smaller towns and rural areas will throw up their hands and say: “How are we going to squeeze in the proposed extra lanes for bicycles? This will have to wait until whole areas are replanned and rebuilt.”
If the ministry wants to promote bicycle lanes, they must be integrated in a sustainable public transportation policy. The MOTC should cooperate with the Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency on a policy that promotes the participation of local governments. The network of bike lanes in different cities should be connected, rather than just opening up new roads. If road construction merely follows MOTC standards, engineers will only consider bike lanes within the priorities set by those standards.
Simply put, if a provincial highway should be 30m wide, engineers will only consider road use within that scope, and Taiwan would soon have a network of bike lanes following major roads. But bike lanes should meet the requirements of bicycles and their riders. They don’t need to rigidly follow the road network, since slope angle and curvature requirements are very different from those of roads for cars. They also do not need to run alongside main roads, forcing cyclists to ride alongside massive buses, gravel trucks and more. Surely this cannot be the intent, nor is it the kind of bike lane that bike enthusiasts want.
Bike lanes make up the first link in a chain of energy savings and carbon emission reduction measures. Getting more people out of gas-guzzling vehicles and onto bikes is also a public health policy. Focusing on what cyclists want and need when planning and building new bike paths would also provide a way to reform the bureaucratic system so that it focuses on the public’s wants and needs rather than itself.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not