Taiwan is a nation built around roads and highways. This is because after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lost the Chinese Civil War and retreated to Taiwan, the party looked to the US for guidance and a lot of the transportation policy was made by experts and academics who had studied in the US.
In contrast, during the Japanese colonial period, Taiwan’s transport policy was influenced by Japanese and European railways. This is a better vision for public transportation in a small, densely populated nation.
Today’s Tokyo Metro started out as a Japanese Rail (JR) circle line that operated in two directions, clockwise and counterclockwise, on elevated tracks. The line became part of the Tokyo Metro’s comprehensive network of lines that criss-cross the nation’s capital.
JR’s extensive national network of railway lines runs north, south, east and west, connecting cities to the countryside. The convenient and efficient railway network effectively complements the nation’s freeways.
Motorbikes are a rare sight in Japanese cities. During the oil crisis of the 1970s, high gasoline prices pushed up the cost of running cars and motorbikes, but this was a problem largely confined to the countryside, as the cities developed public transportation networks.
Within the cities, it is mainly company executives who drive to work due to the high cost of parking and traffic congestion. The average city-based office worker does not commute to work by car.
By contrast, in Taiwan many people commute to and from work using their own transportation. Whether the vehicle is a car or a scooter depends on the financial status of the worker.
Life in Taiwan is dominated by road traffic; sometimes it feels as if every available patch of free space in the nation is given over to cars and scooters. For Taiwanese, having to rely on public transportation is no match for the convenience of owning a vehicle.
The nation has spent a considerable amount developing Taipei’s MRT system, which, due to the capital’s population density, has been adopted by residents as a way of life.
However, there has yet to be a significant reduction in the large number of private vehicles on Taipei’s roads, despite the construction and expansion of the MRT network.
Following the construction of a convenient and fast metropolitan public transportation network, the government must find a way to reduce the number of private vehicles used to commute to and from work.
On the streets of any metropolis in the developed world, pedestrians are king. Is there any other developed nation where scooters and cars take over and cause chaos as they do in Taiwan? Tokyo, whose population is more than half that of Taiwan, shows Taiwan how it should be done.
Since the 1990s, Taipei has gradually built up a convenient and rapid public transportation network, but the city has yet to put in place a corresponding policy to effectively reduce the number of private vehicles on its roads.
Since cars and scooters are still divided along financial lines — people with higher salaries drive cars, while those with more modest incomes ride scooters — how should the number of vehicles be managed and how should the streets be returned to pedestrians? How should the government encourage and popularize cycling among the nation’s city dwellers?
These are questions that officials and residents should come together to answer. Whether moving away from roads toward railways or pursuing a balanced transport strategy, there is no time to waste.
Lee Min-yung is a poet.
Translated by Edward Jones
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