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
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
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
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of
RSS