Nearly 30,000 Taipei residents celebrated 2008 World Car-free Day yesterday by riding bicycles 16km from Taipei City Hall to a riverside plaza near National Taiwan University.
Among the cyclists were many executives and Taipei City Council members. They rode along two of the city’s main roads — which were off-limits to cars and scooters — and then passed through the National Taiwan University campus before taking the riverside bike route between Gongguan and the Jingmei Bridge.
The Car-free Day celebration also includes live music and free coffee for EasyCard holders in Taipei’s Xinyi business district today. The district will restrict traffic from 7am to 5pm, during which no private cars or motorcycles will be allowed.
PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
People using EasyCards on buses passing through the Xinyi district during the period can ride for free rides.
In Taichung City, 5,000 cyclists rode in a car-free environment from a soccer stadium to a section of the elevated expressway between Taichung and Changhua.
Kaohsiung City marked World Car-free Day on Saturday, with residents riding bicycles 6.5km from Central Park to the Kaohsiung Cultural Center.
Taipei has marked World Car-free Day since 2002, while Taichung and Kaohsiung began in 2003.
Thirty-five earthquakes have exceeded 5.5 on the Richter scale so far this year, the most in 14 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said on Facebook on Thursday. A large earthquake in Hualien County on April 3 released five times as much the energy as the 921 Earthquake on Sept. 21, 1999, the agency said in its latest earthquake report for this year. Hualien County has had the most national earthquake alerts so far this year at 64, with Yilan County second with 23 and Changhua County third with nine, the agency said. The April 3 earthquake was what caused the increase in
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is unlikely to attempt an invasion of Taiwan during US president-elect Donald Trump’s time in office, Taiwanese and foreign academics said on Friday. Trump is set to begin his second term early next year. Xi’s ambition to establish China as a “true world power” has intensified over the years, but he would not initiate an invasion of Taiwan “in the near future,” as his top priority is to maintain the regime and his power, not unification, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University distinguished visiting professor and contemporary Chinese politics expert Akio Takahara said. Takahara made the comment at a
DEFENSE: This month’s shipment of 38 modern M1A2T tanks would begin to replace the US-made M60A3 and indigenous CM11 tanks, whose designs date to the 1980s The M1A2T tanks that Taiwan expects to take delivery of later this month are to spark a “qualitative leap” in the operational capabilities of the nation’s armored forces, a retired general told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in an interview published yesterday. On Tuesday, the army in a statement said it anticipates receiving the first batch of 38 M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks from the US, out of 108 tanks ordered, in the coming weeks. The M1 Abrams main battle tank is a generation ahead of the Taiwanese army’s US-made M60A3 and indigenously developed CM11 tanks, which have
CASE COUNT: The deceased had advised law enforcement agencies regarding 60 fraud cases this year, leading to the confiscation of NT$9.3 billion in alleged illegal proceeds Prosecutors yesterday launched an investigation into the death of cryptocurrency expert Miffy Chen (陳梅慧), who died in a car crash on Wednesday under what some consider to be suspicious circumstances following her work with law enforcement to track down NT$9.3 billion (US$286.97 million) in alleged illegal proceeds. Prosecutor-General Hsing Tai-chao (邢泰釗) tasked the Hsinchu District Prosecutors’ Office with investigating the incident following requests from the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) and other agencies with which she worked to crack several prominent cases involving financial fraud and money laundering. Chen was killed in a six-car pileup near Hsinchu in the northbound lanes of Sun
RSS