Commuter bicycle culture
The article about newly designed bikes in Taiwan and mention of plans to have more bikes for commuting drew my attention, because the article mentioned the Giant company (“The next big bike,” Nov. 19, page 11). The article said that Giant should develop more commuter bikes, but apparently was not aware that Giant has a big assembly factory in the Netherlands where all sorts of commuter bikes — even e-bikes — are assembled for the Dutch market.
During my years in Taiwan, I commuted by bike from Zhonghe District (中和), New Taipei City, into Taipei on a daily basis, even though at the time everybody considered it a form of suicide. My biggest problem was — and actually still is, since I return to Taiwan every year for several months — that not one manufacturer in Taiwan produces commuter bikes with frames fitted for a person’s height.
Here in the Netherlands we say “we are born with a bike between the legs.” Our children learn to ride a bike as soon as they can and you see parents with kids as young as four years old already on bike lanes on their own bikes.
By the time children grow up they have gone through at least four different sizes of bikes. We consider it important that you have the right frame for your height to not only ride comfortably, but also to prevent damage to knees and legs.
High-school students here almost all commute to school by bike, sometimes over a distance of more than 10km and in all kinds of weather.
As long as there are not enough safe bike lanes in Taiwan, there will not be a commuting bike culture like there is in the Netherlands, and parents will not encourage children to start riding bicycles at an early age. The YouBikes are a success, but most are mainly used infrequently by the same person and this mostly for short distances.
And last, but not least: The bikes I saw in the picture with the article are very similar to bikes I have seen here.
Elisabeth Rutten
Netherlands
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