In a bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions, all agencies and public schools under the Taipei City Government are to purchase only electric scooters from now on, the Taipei Environmental Protection Department said yesterday.
Department official Yan Ling-chen (顏伶珍) said Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) had signed off on the rule, making Taipei the first city in the nation to implement the rule.
Yan said that traditional scooters contribute to global warming and poor air quality, as each scooter emits an average of 415.9kg more carbon dioxide and 0.18kg more PM2.5 — pathogenic airborne particulates measuring up to 2.5 micrometers — than an electric scooter does in one year.
She said that although the number of registered electric scooters in Taipei has risen from 3,831 in 2013 to 5,713 last year, that still constitutes only a small proportion, 0.6 percent, of the scooters in the municipality.
She said that schools and agencies under the city government have a total of 2,258 scooters, of which only 44 are electric, adding up to a paltry 2 percent of all scooters used by public servants.
That indicates the government could step up its commitment to embracing environmentally friendly vehicles, she said, adding that she hopes that by gradually phasing out gasoline-powered scooters in the public sector, the private sector would then follow suit.
The city has 370 charging points at MRT stations, parking lots and stores selling electric scooters, and the number is expected to reach 400 by the end of this year, she said.
The Taipei Department of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said it had added electric scooters under the city’s procurement guidelines to be observed by all agencies for fiscal year 2017.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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