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Government must promote cycling

The Ministry of Transportation and Communications has said that it will evaluate the possibility of promoting cycling for short-distance transportation. This report has brought hope to those who are in the habit of riding bicycles to and from work.

If implemented, cycling will become more popular and it will also mean a move toward a more environmentally friendly and healthy lifestyle.

Today, bicycles are not only a lifestyle. They also involve politics, as seen by the media reports of politicians, such as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

In a recent film, Island Etude (練習曲), the good-spirited Alvis (東相明) cycles around the island. Seventy-three-year-old Giant Manufacturing chairman King Liu (劉金標), who is reported to have been inspired by the film, has also ridden a bicycle around the island.

Aside from politics and long-distance travel, bicycles are also good as recreational tools. From Taitung County's Kuanshan (關山) in the south to Taipei County's Tamsui (淡水) in the north, local governments have completed hundreds of kilometers of bicycle tracks that have been well-received by the public.

It would be even better if the ministry could state clearly that one of its policy goals was to promote the use of bicycles as a viable alternative form of transport. Then the year-end report would not have to evaluate whether or not to promote bicycles but rather could provide responses to the various obstacles to pushing through the plan.

Currently, the greatest difficulty is that there are 5.7 million cars and 13.5 million motorcycles, numbers that are increasing at an annual rate of 3.5 percent. If this trend cannot be reversed, motorcycles will continue to be more popular than bicycles as a mean of transportation.

It will be difficult to shrink the gap between motorcycles and bicycles through government policy, but it would be a great thing if in the not-too-distant future the ratio of motorcycles to bicycles were reversed. The number of cars and motorcycles could be reduced and maybe only be used on weekends, while bicycles would complement public transportation and become a dependable and safe means of transport.

This would also alleviate many of the dangers cyclists face when sharing the roads with cars, eliminate the difficulty of finding parking spaces and diminish excessive carbon dioxide emissions and other problems. Once air quality is ameliorated, riding bicycles will become even healthier, which would also help alleviate the burden on the national health insurance system.

This beautiful vision will take time to realize. Industrial policy and livelihood patterns must be given time to adjust. The ministry will have to implement a cross-ministerial plan and bring environmental organizations and student groups onboard. The plan must be carried out in different phases beginning with local trials before expansion. In this way, more and more people living within a certain distance from work would begin to ride bicycles to and from the office.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. A good start would be for public officials to set a good example and overturn the connection between politics and bicycles. I have heard that environmental bureau staffers in San Francisco ride bicycles to work every day. Even if our Environmental Protection Administration and ministry staffers don't start riding bicycles to work immediately, at least they could announce a clear and effective policy. Then maybe those politicians who like to campaign on their bicycles could take it one step further and promote cycling as a lifestyle and encourage more people to ride their bikes to the office.

Feng Chien-san is a professor in the journalism department at National Chengchi University and a member of the 523 Mountaineering Association.

Translated by Lin Ya-ti
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