Motorcyclists will be charged for parking in certain designated districts from July, Taipei City Government officials announced yesterday.
The city's Bureau of Transportation Director Lin Chih-ying (林志盈) announced the policy at a weekly municipal meeting and said the charge will be NT$10 per hour or NT$20 per day. The bureau will also sell monthly tickets.
Motorcyclists who park in the designated areas without paying will be fined, although penalties have yet to be determined, Lin said.
The bureau has commissioned a research panel to identify appropriate areas in Taipei where the policy can be put into practice.
When the policy takes effect in July, it will initially not be implemented citywide.
"Business and shopping districts will be our preferred trial areas, since these are the districts with the most traffic," Lin said, adding that Xinyi will probably be one of the districts that will charge motorcyclists.
Peripheral areas around college campuses and walkways in front of stores will initially not be affected.
Lin said the bureau has allocated four parking areas in Neihu (
"We want to encourage citizens to take advantage of the MRT system as an alternative to their own means of transportation in an attempt to reduce traffic congestion," Lin said.
"We also want to improve the management of motorcycles, of which there are now more than one million in Taipei City," he said.
But some motorcyclists have said that the city government just wants to take advantage of motorcyclists to help ease its financial problems.
"Most motorcyclists are people who cannot afford a car. They are an economic minority group compared with the car drivers, but the city government does not seem to be considering this point," said a student surnamed Cheng (
"I pay NT$50 a week for fuel for my scooter, but now I will have to pay the same amount for an afternoon's parking," Cheng said, adding that it will be a burden to students like him.
"I think the city government should do a survey of public opinion first," he said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift