The most formidable foe that Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has come up against since he embarked upon his new career in politics has not been the wealthy major corporations or the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT): It is the city’s rush-hour traffic. Not everyone in the city is going to be aware of how Ko has dealt with Big Business or his political enemies, but they will be aware of his successes, or otherwise, in the traffic department. When it comes to traffic, the buck stops with the mayor.
The deteriorating traffic situation and the seriousness of the rush-hour traffic jams has become a daily headache for Taipei residents. Ask anyone who drives in the city, and they will have stories about how they had been stuck at this or that intersection for one or two hours, without moving more than a few centimeters.
Everyone, too, has their own idea about what is causing the recent traffic holdups. Some blame it on the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, while others point to the cold weather and persistent rain. Some people say the recent plunge in oil prices has meant it is simply cheaper to run a car, while others blame roadwork that is blocking traffic lanes and exacerbating the situation. Some people are also saying the problem is not being made any easier by the construction of bike lanes in the city, which are cutting the width of roads for vehicular traffic. Others blame the city government’s decision to remove traffic police from major intersections, relying instead on automated signs to regulate traffic flow.
Ko’s approach has been to install surveillance equipment at major intersections to measure the actual flow of traffic. Ko is a doctor. His modus operandi is to look at the scientific evidence first, ascertain the cause of the illness and then prescribe a treatment. This is the correct approach, but it takes time. And just as he is trying to find out what is troubling the patient, and people living in the city are reaching breaking point, the city government decides to start dismantling an onramp for the Zhongxiao Bridge (忠孝橋), which is likely to create yet another traffic bottleneck and make an already bad situation worse.
Although Ko’s decision to reinstate traffic police at some intersections has opened him up to accusations of flip-flopping, it is actually an effective emergency measure. Yes, there remains much planning to be done to address the problem in the long term, but the mayor has to start with an effective way of regulating traffic. The bike lane policy, too, is right, although the execution leaves much to be desired, as several major thoroughfares have been reduced to just one or two lanes. When you add to this the effect of construction, it is difficult to see how the situation is going to improve any time soon. It does make you wonder whether the city government has put sufficient thought into this whole process.
While the city government’s efforts should be encouraged, the fact remains that traffic is constantly being diverted during the day, even during rush hour, as workers seal off sections of road and cement mixers block lanes. It does seem like the city government’s traffic planning has been careless and needs to be improved.
Taipei has already seen its fair share of dark traffic days. Just think back to when construction of the MRT system first began. The MRT now transports 2 million people around the city on a daily basis, and yet there is still a problem with congestion. The problems extend beyond the Lunar New Year swell, the roadwork and the problems with traffic management. The relevant Taipei City Government departments need to come up with better long-term planning for traffic flow, routes and public transport in Taipei and New Taipei City.
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