While the Tour de France just ended in Europe, Taiwan is experiencing its own craze for cycling as a healthy leisure activity. Although this is something to be welcomed, it is worth asking how this fashion can be made to last.
Local governments have been building a number of bicycle paths along the banks of streams and rivers. It sounds like a good idea, but is it?
In 2002, the Sports Affairs Council sponsored a report on creating a system of cycle routes throughout Taiwan. The report defines three categories of routes: leisure cycling paths, race tracks and routes for everyday travel and commuting.
The council provides subsidies for local governments and departments to construct cycle routes and provide related services, with the total budget for such projects coming to NT$1.6 billion from 2002 to 2006.
In addition, the interior ministry’s Construction and Planning Agency has launched a New Townscape Creation Project, which sets aside considerable funds for bicycle route construction.
Examples are the creation of tourism-oriented cycle path networks in scenic areas like Guanshan (關山) in Taitung County, Meinung (美濃) in Kaohsiung County and Fulong (福隆) in Taipei County. Another example is a planned path that will lead from the Tamsui River estuary upstream along the Tamsui and Dahan rivers all the way to the Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫) in Taoyuan County. Construction of this and similar networks in the greater Taipei region will involve laying a lot of new paths to connect existing tracks and roads.
These riverside cycle paths are provided for leisure purposes. The main engineering concerns in planning and building them are their length, how to connect the different sections, resolving road-use conflicts with other vehicles and pedestrians, and so on.
There are, however, some social and ecological problems that have so far been overlooked.
The biggest problem is that the cycle paths are being planned and built according to urban standards instead of taking local conditions into account.
Concrete paths running along the coast or the banks of rivers and streams cut off the lateral connections of coastal and riverside ecosystems, obstructing the movement of amphibious and terrestrial animals between water and land.
Many alien plants are also being introduced for landscaping purposes, invading the natural coastal forests and riverside flood plains. Maintenance of these man-made landscapes will also require interminable financial and manpower costs that seem distant now but will become all too obvious over time.
Designs that might be right for cycle routes in urban areas should not be applied uniformly in other places.
Additionally, planning of cycle routes has not taken into account local social and cultural factors. This attitude is what led to the demolition of houses in the Sa’owac (撒屋瓦知) settlement of Amis Aborigines by the Dahan River, which was strongly protested by the villagers and their supporters.
The way bicycle paths are designed must be changed to differentiate between urban and rural conditions, and they should be carefully integrated into existing communities when they pass through them.
Let us hope that the current wave of interest in cycling for health will not fizzle away, as so many fashions do in Taiwan. In my opinion, if cycle routes are going to help save energy and cut carbon dioxide emissions, then the emphasis should be shifted to cycling in daily life.
Safe and convenient routes should be established in and around existing communities, allowing individuals to gradually get out of the habit of making short trips by car or scooter.
When setting out routes for travel to and from work and school, local authorities should not just think in terms of the total length of paths built. Rather, they should think of each village, borough or community as a living space in which all essential services are within cycling range, and then construct integrated route networks that people can use safely and without worries.
Cycle routes built for daily needs are not the kind of thing that is all the rage today, but forgotten tomorrow. Connected together, they could form an island-wide cycling network. Considering the relative advantages, it really is not a good idea to devote all available resources to building riverside cycle tracks that radiate from cities into the surrounding countryside.
Day Yeong-tyi is director of the Sustainable Built Environment Research Center at Chung Yuan Christian University.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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