A policy to open up more fast lanes for motorcyclists would unnerve motorists, compromising safety, a Taipei City Government official said, sparking an outcry from netizens.
The Taipei Department of Transportation on Friday said that it was considering making more fast lanes available to motorcyclists so that people riding scooters and motorbikes would have more road space, thereby avoiding the hazards associated with cars parked on roadsides, such as people suddenly opening car doors.
However, Taipei Police Department Deputy Commissioner Chen Ming-cheng (陳銘政) said the plan would “put mental pressure on motorists,” and that the department should take car users safety into consideration when assessing the plan.
Transportation department data show that 44 sections of fast lanes in Taipei have been opened to motorcyclists since 2009, including sections along major trunk routes, such as Chengde Road, Zhongxiao E Rd, Nangjing E and Nangjing W roads and Minquan E and Minquan W roads.
Chen’s comment was met with a largely negative response online, with many netizens saying that Chen put car users before motorcyclists.
“If a person had a heavy scooter or motorcycle, no one would be saying it is unsafe,” Facebook user Frank Chen said, adding that there seem to be few people that have an issue with drivers’ rights, even though many of them double-park on the side of roads and do not yield to oncoming traffic when making a turn.
Facebook user Wu Cheng-wei (吳政緯) said motorcyclists are exposed to the dangers of illegal parking, taxis suddenly stopping and buses cutting into the slow lane to pick up passengers.
“If motorcyclists were allowed to use the fast lane, they could avoid these potential dangers and they would be much safer,” Wu said.
The New Taipei City Transportation Department said it has allocated 67 designated motorcycle lanes, as well as reduced the number of lanes on Chongshan Rd in Yonghe District (永和) from three to two, so that motorcyclists are given more space and are less likely to be edged off the road.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the