I’ve lived in Kaohsiung for three years and I’ve never driven a scooter here. I will admit the bus system is a real pain in the butt, even if you are familiar with it. You may have memorized schedules and learned where the buses go and how they work, but it seems drivers still end up arriving late, not arriving at all, or more infuriatingly, they may drive right past you. :bluemad: It’s probably the only thing about public transportation that I have a real issue with. But with the MRT system and a bicycle, travel is convenient enough, at least for me. Also, there’s the bigger picture, which is that I don’t and won’t drive a scooter because it’s more environmentally friendly, and I don’t support the selfish driving culture in this city.
Notice that people who live K-town habitually drive to go to a 7-11 or tea shop just around the corner. They live their lives like they’d never grown a pair of feet. 
Obviously, I do a lot of walking, but the places I need to go are rarely more than a 15 minute walk away from the MRT. I really don’t think it’s so bad even with the heat (bring a parasol or walk a shady, cooler route, and I don’t mind it, but if you ever tell a local you’ve walked even 5 minutes to get somewhere, they’ll gasp and complain about how it’s SO FAR. I’ve even had people tell me that that kind of walk simply can’t be done. Once I needed directions to a place that turned out to be just down the block, and before I knew that someone told me, “Oh, it’s too far. You won’t be able to get there without a scooter.” :ohreally: I won’t even get started about theirs feelings on riding bicycles. People are just purely lazy here.
I choose to take public transportation, especially the MRT, because it’s a new system and it needs people to support it. If people don’t take the MRT, it’ll be a lot harder for the company to develop more lines and for them run more trains more often, and it’s also harder to change other people’s attitudes towards taking it.
People drive scooters because it’s convenient, but it’s only convenient because they can drive anywhere they want to, as quickly and recklessly as they want to without the police doing anything about. This is not just on the streets, but also on the sidewalks and in parks. Then they park on the sidewalks and street corners. They don’t have any consideration for others, and they stink up the street in a really terrible way. This makes it really hard and dangerous for pedestrians, and it makes it dangerous for other drivers, too. Actually, I’m pretty sure you’re in much more danger than a pedestrian if you drive along with other scooterists. At least pedestrians spend most of their commute underground and off the street.
If you feel you can manage without a scooter, I’m pretty sure you can too. I don’t really understand the need to rush around. Please, this is Kaohsiung, and it’s really not a fast paced city quite like Taipei. People are consistently late, they don’t plan for anything, and they wander around aimlessly. That seems to be something they embrace here. And if you’ve got a long commute, read a book, listen to some great music as you watch the city through the window, or interact with people during your ride, and the time you sit around on a bus is much better spent than if you were zipping around the city, not really doing anything at all.
Some especially useful tricks to make travel convenient for me:
Taking the MRT, and bringing a folding bicycle. It’s free, so if the walk does turn out to be a little further, especially on a hot day, you just unfold the bike and roll over to wherever it is you need to get to. When you get there, just lock it up, or fold and carry it inside.
Also, if I were going on a shopping trip at Costco or Carrefour, I usually make it only a monthly or bi-monthly trip. I walk or train it one way, buy a TON of stuff (like we do at home), and hire a cab for the way back. Depending on where I am, it’ll cost somewhere between 90 to 220 for me to do all that. Totally worth it when you buy enough stuff to fill a car all the way because someone else is doing the driving after an exhausting shopping trip AND you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting by yourself. :discodance:
