The Taipei City Government is planning to extend the length of city’s bicycle lanes to 40km this year and launch more rental stops for its YouBike bicycle-sharing system with the aim of turning Taipei into a bicycle-friendly city.
The city’s Department of Transportation yesterday said it would build a total of 10km of bike lanes on Xinyi Road and Nanjing E Road this year to extend the city’s existing 29km of bike lanes.
The number of cyclists in Taipei has reached 170,000, and the city plans to build more bicycle lanes to provide a safer environment for the growing number of cyclists, said Lai Jen-tsung (賴仁宗), a division chief at the department.
Next year, the city will build bike lanes along Xinsheng S Road and Roosevelt Road.
Chen Shyue-tair (陳學台), director of the department’s traffic engineering office, said the department had opened some sidewalks for cyclists because of the limited road space in Taipei, but pedestrians had complained about the dangerous driving of some cyclists.
“The department expects the establishment of more bike lanes to solve the problem,” he said.
To promote bicycles as a “green” transportation tool, the department also said it had launched four more rental stops for its YouBike system at the National Taiwan University Hospital MRT Station, National Taiwan Normal University’s Gongguan branch, the Youth Park, and the intersection of Guoxing Road and Qingnian Road.
This brings the total number of YouBike rental stops to 68, the department said, adding that total rental numbers are estimated to reach 700,000 this month.
The department plans to increase the total number of rental stops to 162 by the end of the year to make the bicycles more accessible to commuters.
Aside from bicycle lanes and sidewalks, cyclists can also use slow lanes, Chen said, while urging cyclists to respect the rights of pedestrians.
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