The government was urged yesterday to expand the number of cycle-only lanes around the country to help turn Taiwan into a “bike island.”
King Liu (劉金標), chairman of Taiwan’s flagship bicycle maker Giant, said that despite government efforts to promote cycling to save energy and cut carbon dioxide emissions, cyclists’ safety on the roads is not secured and their “right to use the roads” is not protected at all.
Citing Denmark’s capital of Copenhagen as an example, Liu said that about one-third of the city’s office workers go to work by bicycle — one of the highest percentages of cycle commuters in the world.
Liu attributed Copenhagen’s high percentage of cyclists to the government’s sound plans, investment and relevant laws, including building bike routes alongside every major road in the municipality.
Taking the Netherlands as another example, Liu said the Dutch have adopted a culture of “replacing cars with bikes” over the past century, as environmental protection has always been a major and sensitive issue in the low-lying country.
Liu said there are bike routes on every major road in Amsterdam and Rotterdam as well as parking lots exclusively for bicycles.
He quoted statistics from the Netherlands that he said indicate that each Dutch person owns an average of three bicycles, representing the highest bicycle density in the world.
Furthermore, the Netherlands and Denmark both maintained a “City Bike” service system, allowing people to use bikes free of charge, he said.
Liu said Giant had played a strong role between the government and the public in an effort to make Taiwan’s road conditions more conducive to cycling since its Cycling Lifestyle Foundation was established 18 years ago.
Believing that high fuel prices would result in less automobile use and more widespread use of bikes and electric scooters, Liu said Giant has continued to make efforts in an attempt to turn Taiwan into a “bike island.”
Among the various programs Giant has launched was a service that allowed cyclists to “rent a bike at place A and return it at place B” across Taipei City and county.
“A total of 2.65 million people have used the service over the past six years,” Liu said.
In addition, he said, by cooperating with Giant, the Cabinet-level Sports Affairs Council has since last year designated May as “cycling month” and one of the first days in May as “cycling day.”
Meanwhile, the Executive Yuan has been planning to develop bicycle routes alongside major roads in the country’s 25 cities and counties in an effort to save energy and cut carbon dioxide emissions.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater