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.
China has not been a top-tier issue for much of the second Trump administration. Instead, Trump has focused considerable energy on Ukraine, Israel, Iran, and defending America’s borders. At home, Trump has been busy passing an overhaul to America’s tax system, deporting unlawful immigrants, and targeting his political enemies. More recently, he has been consumed by the fallout of a political scandal involving his past relationship with a disgraced sex offender. When the administration has focused on China, there has not been a consistent throughline in its approach or its public statements. This lack of overarching narrative likely reflects a combination
US President Donald Trump’s alleged request that Taiwanese President William Lai (賴清德) not stop in New York while traveling to three of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, after his administration also rescheduled a visit to Washington by the minister of national defense, sets an unwise precedent and risks locking the US into a trajectory of either direct conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or capitulation to it over Taiwan. Taiwanese authorities have said that no plans to request a stopover in the US had been submitted to Washington, but Trump shared a direct call with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平)
Heavy rains over the past week have overwhelmed southern and central Taiwan, with flooding, landslides, road closures, damage to property and the evacuations of thousands of people. Schools and offices were closed in some areas due to the deluge throughout the week. The heavy downpours brought by the southwest monsoon are a second blow to a region still recovering from last month’s Typhoon Danas. Strong winds and significant rain from the storm inflicted more than NT$2.6 billion (US$86.6 million) in agricultural losses, and damaged more than 23,000 roofs and a record high of nearly 2,500 utility poles, causing power outages. As
The greatest pressure Taiwan has faced in negotiations stems from its continuously growing trade surplus with the US. Taiwan’s trade surplus with the US reached an unprecedented high last year, surging by 54.6 percent from the previous year and placing it among the top six countries with which the US has a trade deficit. The figures became Washington’s primary reason for adopting its firm stance and demanding substantial concessions from Taipei, which put Taiwan at somewhat of a disadvantage at the negotiating table. Taiwan’s most crucial bargaining chip is undoubtedly its key position in the global semiconductor supply chain, which led
RSS