A number of people and organizations are encouraging commuters to use bicycles to go to work, especially now that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has decided to unfreeze fuel and energy price rises so soon after Ma’s re-election.
Among those organizations are the Taipei Cyclist Federation, bike commuter-friendly corporations that provide showers and changing facilities to their employees and, of course, bike shops. Conspicuously absent from this new bike craze, however, is the Taipei City Government, the Taipei MRT Corp and private bus companies in and around the city.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) seems to think of people who ride bicycles as just weekend enthusiasts, content to use the few bike paths available, which are often in need of repair. Nothing is being done to make the city’s roads safe for cycling, police do little to stop taxis and buses from overtaking and nearly crushing bikers, and there are no integrated traffic lanes for cyclists. The river paths are the safest place to ride in Taipei, but they often do not go near the business districts of the city, such as Xinyi District (信義).
The MRT Corp has the same kind of blinders on — it only allows people to bring bikes on the MRT during weekends, at certain stations and for a steep price. It would be impossible for a bicycle commuter to integrate the MRT into his or her commute during a regular work week. Nor is it possible with buses. In a city like Seattle, Washington, buses often have bike racks in front of their windshields for cyclists’ bikes. Not so in Taipei.
With fuel costs rising, more people will switch to pedal power, but it will likely not be sustainable except among avid bike enthusiasts. In most cases, office workers will try out bike commuting for a few days, maybe a few weeks, and then they will go back to relying on scooters, MRT trains or buses because of the daunting obstacles to bike commuting.
To really encourage mass bike commuting, as seen in Denmark or the Netherlands, where 30 percent of the workforce commutes by bicycle, the entire culture of the city needs to change.
The city government needs to dedicate lanes on roads to bicycles, and not just in the failed way that Hau did on Taipei’s Dunhua North and South Road in 2009, when a green lane on the side of the road meant to be a bike path turned instantly into a taxi parking, waiting and pick-up area.
Employers need to accommodate their bicycle commuting employees by giving them a place to change their clothes and even installing showers in public restrooms.
Public transportation firms need to give commuters a viable option for carrying their bikes on buses and trains so they can be integrated into long-distance commuting. Imagine a commuter who lives in Tamshui (淡水), New Taipei City (新北市), riding every day to Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) without using the MRT.
The commuters themselves also need to realize that they are going to get sweaty, dirty and wet when cycling to and from work. They should dress accordingly, and make sure they have extra changes of clothing in their office.
Getting major portions of a workforce to commute by bicycle is not just a pipe dream — it can and has been done. However, it takes hard work, support from the government and responsible employers. There is no better time than now to start realizing this dream.
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
A recent piece of international news has drawn surprisingly little attention, yet it deserves far closer scrutiny. German industrial heavyweight Siemens Mobility has reportedly outmaneuvered long-entrenched Chinese competitors in Southeast Asian infrastructure to secure a strategic partnership with Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate, Vingroup. The agreement positions Siemens to participate in the construction of a high-speed rail link between Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. German media were blunt in their assessment: This was not merely a commercial win, but has symbolic significance in “reshaping geopolitical influence.” At first glance, this might look like a routine outcome of corporate bidding. However, placed in
China often describes itself as the natural leader of the global south: a power that respects sovereignty, rejects coercion and offers developing countries an alternative to Western pressure. For years, Venezuela was held up — implicitly and sometimes explicitly — as proof that this model worked. Today, Venezuela is exposing the limits of that claim. Beijing’s response to the latest crisis in Venezuela has been striking not only for its content, but for its tone. Chinese officials have abandoned their usual restrained diplomatic phrasing and adopted language that is unusually direct by Beijing’s standards. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the
RSS