According to a recent government report, Taipei had a total of 1.5 million motor vehicles last year, a 2.8 percent increase over 1999 and a three percent increase from 1998.
The figures were released by the city's budget, accounting and statistics department.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMESN
Chen Chin-sheng (陳金盛), secretary-general of the city's Bureau of Transportation, said that there is little the city can do to address the steady increase of motor vehicles.
"We started to take notice of the problem several years ago, but it's a very complicated matter to handle," Chen said.
"You simply cannot tell the public not to purchase any more motor vehicles because it doesn't work. Even if we were to do so, it wouldn't solve the problem because there are other vehicles coming into the city from elsewhere."
Of the 1.5 million motor vehicles, about 560,000 were automobiles and 960,000 were motor scooters, the report said.
Chen said that most commuters find it perfectly legitimate to drive or ride a motor scooter to work or school even if the MRT might also be convenient for them.
"It's very hard for the MRT to achieve the door-to-door convenience of cars and motor scooters," he said.
"Our goal is to have 50 percent of frequent commuters take advantage of the mass transportation system within five years."
The MRT and the city's buses ferried about 2.59 million passengers a day last year, an 11.25 percent increase from 1999 and a 24.11 percent increase from 1998.
In other words, some 43 percent of Taipei's frequent commuters take advantage of the mass transportation system, while the remaining 57 percent opt to drive a car or ride a motor scooter.
Chen said that one way for the city to encourage the use of mass transit is to convince motorists that it's actually inconvenient to drive or ride motor scooters.
"We try to increase the parking fees at public parking lots and while we do add more parking spaces every year, we try not to add too many," he said.
The report said that there were about 330,000 parking spaces for the 560,000 automobiles and over 49,000 for the 960,000 motor scooters last year, up about 4 percent and 26 percent respectively from those available the previous year.
Parking fees at public parking lots cost NT$10 an hour for motor scooters and between NT$20 and NT$50 an hour for automobiles.
Chen said the city also plans to implement "car-free days" in the future.
"We might start with the Hsinyi District first. On that particular day, no individual motor vehicles would be allowed to enter the area. Only buses, bicycles and skate scooters [would be permitted to enter the area]," he said.
In order to solve the problem once and for all, Chen said the central government needs to enact a law controlling the total number of motor vehicles and that it needs to increase the license tax.
Motorists are currently require to pay both license and fuel taxes ranging between NT$10,000 and NT$80,000 a year. Although motor scooter riders are not required to pay the annual license tax, they are required to pay a fuel tax of between NT$600 and NT$900 a year.
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