A big HUGE ASS enormous fan, which will blow dirty air back to China. Same fan will also bring the smell of freedums and traditional values back to Mainland.
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Well, jokes aside, they only try to control 2T scooters - yep, those things smoke like it’s hell, but 2T scooters are minority, most of them are 4T. They still smoke’n’smell, but less. General idea is just forbid petrol scooters in metropolitan areas, like Hangzhou in China did. Either you use electric ones or you ride something else. Problem of Taiwanese drivers on SILENT scooters is for another topic.
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Yes, that makes your username come true!
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Hearing that brother. Congestion charge is the way. If people need to ride scooters, they should pay
True. But I still wonder how it’s possible to implement congestion charge for something as small as a scooter, which can be literally parked anywhere and move around on pavements if needed (say, to avoid automated toll). They don’t have license plates in the front like cars do, and usually come in massive herds, especially in rush hours. Identifying those guys would be a problem. At least most of the cars have that radio sticker for highway electronic tolls, that thing is actually used by Taiwanese now to identify a vehicle in the city as well. Scooters don’t have such thing, they’s not allowed on highways and don’t need it.
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I still have about nine months to go living in Taiwan. I have two pressing questions in my mind seeing the current air pollution level:
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How much of my total life expectency do I approximately subtract for every additional day, week or month I live in this environment?
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Is wearing a mask really effective? I wore one for the first time this week following the advice of most locals, but it does not inspire much confidence to be honest. I am under the impression that it just gives a false sense of security.
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who knows? taiwan has a life expectancy of around 80 years. so i guess, you shouldn’t worry too much^^
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i don’t think so, at least not those cheap throw-away masks. maybe those medically-approved ones might have some effect but i still doubt their effectiveness in practise.
Looks like the pollution problem has been around for some time, plus blaming scooters as one of the chief culprits. This article is from 1996, not much has changed, except that things are a lot worse.
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A couple more links
Taiwan plans to ban two-stroke scooters in 2020
“Lee said the plan is to gradually phase out the use of two-stroke scooters through a democratic process, by amending the Air Pollution Control Act after reaching a common consensus on the issue throughout society.”
“As of the end of 2015, there were still 2.16 million two-stroke motorbikes in use in Taiwan, accounting for about 16 percent of the 13.66 million motorbikes on the country’s roads.”
Suppose using the Egate stickers with huge fines for vehicles found without them. Just doing huge sweeps of every illegally parked scooter in the city and actually enforcing the parking laws would do it.
Travelling by scooter is basically free right now, which is insane
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Just from an anecdotal standpoint I have seen very few two strokes actually being used.
Problem is definitely in the sheer number of scooters (and vehicles) crammed into the west coast of this little island.
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Problem is with politics here. Nobody wants a horde of pissed off voters. And limiting scooters will piss off a lot of people.
For a reality check, cumulative sales of electric scooters have reached 60.000 (out of 13.6 million total scooters). The government’s peanut sized grand vision is to reach 200.000 electric scooters by 2021. In other words they have already given up replacing gasoline scooters. In four years time they hope that 1.5 % of scooters will be electric. Pathetic!
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Yep so you have to do in a crafty way. Lower the subsidies, start enforcing the existing laws, more paid parking and congestion charges for all vehicles. Would be political suicide to be so blatant
Yeah, that “start enforcing the laws” part is quite tricky. Laws don’t work in Taiwan. Rules do. Especially unspoken ones.
Here’s my previous thread on the topic.
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Well, there you go. At least Mayor Ko is somewhat of a doer
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How about banning paper money burning or if there are already laws in place then enforce them
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1.5%!!! big woop!
Yep, if they replace 100,000 gasoline scooters with electric every year, which is more than they do now, it will only take 100 years to replace 13 million gasoline scooters. Way to go, man!
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