Its true - the plans are on the drawing board. The idea is to make riding a motorcycle in Taipei as difficult as possible - mainly through the removal of parking spaces for motorbikes, thereby resulting in fines, ‘tow-aways’ etc. which is presumably meant to make motorcyclists give up and take public transport, or more likely, drive cars.
Had I not been at a European Chamber of Commerce meeting with Emile Sheng, I would not have known about this. Sheng is one of the chief architects of the plan. The meeting referred to can be seen from this link (ecct.com.tw/index.php?Itemid … &task=view), but no reference is made to the motorcycle restriction plan on their site. Its restriction by stealth.
Don’t they realize that a motorcycle is one of the most environmentally friendly forms of transport available (after the bicycle)?. We are being discriminated against. The carbon footprint of a motorbike is far smaller than that of all other road users (except of course bicycles). Imbecilic politicians who never ride motorbikes need to educated through militant action. I intend to start a campaign to highlight this gross unfairness and erosion of civil liberties (specific actions under planning - so watch this space), however, in the meantime please talk to your Taiwanese friends about this, just to raise awareness etc. A fracas is brewing…
Does their next plan deal with the motorscooter menace?
Looks like they are missing the target by focusing on the small number of motorcycles in Taiwan/Taipei and wasting time making rules about motorscooter.
After that maybe they can actually ENFORCE rules that are already on the books.
Well thats great news (sarc), im moving to taipei and during my trips there i realise the fastest way around town is by a large bike, wife agrees and i get all excited about it and then i read this
Only fair. I’m sure most pedestrians will be happy that they will no longer need to climb over them on sidewalks, jump out of the way when the rider rides down the sidewalk or believes the red light doesn’t apply to them.
Taipei’s got a perfectly good public transit system that covers (or will cover) most of the city.
and I think you’re getting confused between motorcycle categories here: the intention is to remove parking for scooters, because large motorcycles have to act like cars.
All I know is that it is much more difficult (already) to park a motorcycle than it was 2 years ago. After years of never spending more than 3 seconds looking for a spot, I now regularly cruise a block or two past all-full parking spaces before moving half a dozen bikes to make 32cms for mine.
I thought, at first, that some construction near my office was the culprit. Then I figured that the financial crisis had resulted in many more people using scooters instead of cars. Now, I wonder if the removal of parking places for bikes has been going on for a while.
For those of you taking public transport and wagging your fingers at motorcyclists, try to imagine your bus or MRT car with another 20 people on it each day. What is now a perfectly good public transportation system might not seem so good if you commute with your nose in my arm pit.
This has been in the works for awhile, when I first came to Taipei there was pretty much a free for all with scooter parking. Then they put in the boxes and that cut out a lot of scooter parking and made trips into Taipei a real drag. They’ve already started making scooters pay to park in the Ximending area.
I see where they are coming from, but this is direction from people who do not take public transport short of it being a photo op. This truly screws the lower and middle class residents who need to get into Taipei. It will take them longer to get to work and back home now. I would truly hate to have to take a bus from Sanchong to Taipei during rush hour. This doesn’t even cover emergencies like if your kid is sick, etc. I’d actually like to see the DPP take this issue on as it would be a nice wedge to get Su as Taipei City mayor.
[quote=“zender”]
I thought, at first, that some construction near my office was the culprit. Then I figured that the financial crisis had resulted in many more people using scooters instead of cars. Now, I wonder if the removal of parking places for bikes has been going on for a while.[/quote]
I did read some years ago that it was the policy of the Taipei city govt. to slowly reduce the number of on-street parking spaces. The targets are to increase space for pedestrians and traffic alike, encourage use of both private and public parking lots and to encourage more use of public transport.
That was the spaces for cars and it makes some sense. You can also say that the motorcycle or scooter is the scourge of bigger cities in Taiwan. They have their pros and cons.
Pros:
Perhaps one scooter in use is one less car.
Several scooters can occupy the space one car uses, either in traffic or parked.
Cons:
Scooters always seem to parked randomly, all over the sidewalk.
Scooters seem to be ridden much more randomly than cars, wrong way up one-way etc.
3,000 scooters parked tightly together outside of a building is a fire trap. If one catches fire the rest soon follow and then no-one gets out of that building.
Business owners have always shown complete disregard for how or where their employees or customers park.
I predict a huge backlash against this move. A huge number of Taipei residents do not live or work close to the MRT and switching from scooter to bus will result in a huge increase in their commute time. For those with convenient public transport handy it will probably mean an increase in cost of living which many cannot really afford.
A better solution would be:
The city requires proof of an off-road parking place for any vehicle registered to residents. Of course a great number of residents would somehow game that system by registering vehicles to friends or relatives in areas outside the scope of this system, fake paperwork for certificates etc.
All businesses required to provide a given number of parking places within a given distance of their location both for employees and customers / visitors, the number depending on the size and category of business they operate. It is not right to attract a large number of visitors to a location and then dump the parking demand on the neighborhood.
Sheng’s ideas are short-sighted and biased. The plan punishes the little guy without addressing the underlying causes.
I would prefer they reduce the number of taxis driving around empty and polluting the air or at least replace them by environmentally friendlier vehicles.
have you ever been to a city as far along the path of development as Taipei with as many scooters?
it is a freaking embarrassment.
no more getting run over on the sidewalk.
no more choking on blue smoke coming from grampa’s jiche.
no more orange haired douche bags zig-zagging in and out of lanes.
no more climbing over parked scooters to get in a taxi or off the sidewalk.
no more little fuckies cutting in front of my car giving me a near heart attack.
I know a lot of you drive scooters and think this will suck, and I do have sympathy for you, but there are solutions and you cannot stop change.
A lot of the Taiwanese I know (who often have their own scooters) have told me over the years that “scooters put out too much pollution”, both as a whole and on an individual basis. Can someone confirm if this is true, at least relative to the average person per vehicle? I could sort of believe it being true just from all the exhaust I’ve inhaled the past few years, but I can also see it being someone’s environmental propaganda campaign run amok… Does anyone have unbiased figures?
The behavior of scooterists is appalling, and I am guilty of it too sometimes (though I don’t act like a dick with pedestrians). But everyone here knows that the danger from cars is worse on an other-people-getting-injured basis - if you wanna risk getting yourself hurt, your much more likely to hurt only yourself on a scooter, or at most another scooterist.
But the only way to improve the behavior is through penalty, and I’m fairly sure that by now every single person on this website more than a couple months has posted in one of those topics complaining about how fucking useless the traffic police are. If they’re not gonna even look at people blowing through red lights, turning right from the left lane, turning through red lights nearly killing pedestrians, and parking in the middle of streets, then it’s a little much to ask them to crack down on zigzagging scooters who for the most part hurt only themselves.
And I have a strong feeling neither party would attempt a law that would negatively affect so many people, if there were a major election brewing. The KMT, or at least Ma, have got pretty low polling numbers at the moment don’t they? But then I don’t know the mindset of the politicians here, maybe they have the political savvy of Melman the giraffe.
Go to Japan…Tokyo/Osaka… almost no scooters, go to Seoul…almost no scooters…don’t need 'em. Travel a bit more folks.
Taipei has MRT (yes a very good and fairly economic MRT system actually), trains (comprehensive, regular and cheap), high speed rail, buses (dedicated bus lanes in Taipei, no shortage of buses), cars (excellent roads), bike network (growing all the time) and without scooters will have a lot more pavements, much less noise, aggravation and better air.
You can’t get something for nothing. You want a cheap assed machine for going from A to B in the quickest and cheapest possible time …but don’t want to pay it for it…well sorry we all do do in the end…
The city requires proof of an off-road parking place for any vehicle registered to residents. Of course a great number of residents would somehow game that system by registering vehicles to friends or relatives in areas outside the scope of this system, fake paperwork for certificates etc.[/quote]
Indeed they tried this about twenty years ago and people did exactly as you say.
Perhaps a solution might be parking stickers which must be displayed and can match corresponding parking spaces. As Taipei also has far fewer spaces than the number of vehicles within, they might also consider some system of a first come first served plan which would limit the numbers of cars allowed within areas at one time. Extremely difficult to do however and which could cause back-traffic stretching for miles. Tailbacks are already becoming common however and so this may be less of a consideration in the short term.
Another system which is already incorporated in some cities in the world is a colour scheme program or licence plate program i.e. each day of the week could offer access to limited numbers of vehicles, recognised by corresponding stickers placed in the windscreen. Otherwise by an ‘odd, even’ number plate system. Odd numbers one day, even numbers the next.
What they shouldn’t be doing however is reducing parking spaces altogether. They should be continuing to improve parking facilities whilst maintaining traffic flow.
The problems with taxis is that none of them follow the existing regulations and the police again don’t enforce the regulations. The present regulations supposedly insist that taxis can only operate from ‘taxi bays’ such as in Singapore. This reduces the number of taxis circulating on the roads, fuel consumed by such a wastage and also increases the accountability of taxi drivers as their ‘taxi bays’ can be observed for the safety of users.
Of course the problem in Taipei is that taxi bays are few and far between. Taxis instead park on red lines with practical immunity and cut drivers up and cause accidents by driving irrationally in order to pick up patrons.
Taxis indeed could be the answer to many of the city’s problems, but will the government do a better job of regulating and educating drivers of these devices? Nope! Not as long as the unions have anything to say about it.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Go to Japan…Tokyo/Osaka… almost no scooters, go to Seoul…almost no scooters…don’t need 'em. Travel a bit more folks.
Taipei has MRT (yes a very good and fairly economic MRT system actually), trains (comprehensive, regular and cheap), high speed rail, buses (dedicated bus lanes in Taipei, no shortage of buses), cars (excellent roads), bike network (growing all the time) and without scooters will have a lot more pavements, much less noise, aggravation and better air.
You can’t get something for nothing. You want a cheap assed machine for going from A to B in the quickest and cheapest possible time …but don’t want to pay it for it…well sorry we all do do in the end…[/quote]
The reason the MRT is cheap is because it has to compete with scooters. Once you take away other alternate transportation then just watch the fares shoot up!
I look at the Hsin Yi area around the 101 and think it is very possible. Underground and private lots for scooters take care of the situation very well, imo.
I completely agree. They have done a fantastic job of parking planning in that area.
They have recognised in that area the need for adequate parking in order to service the businesses and patrons in that area. Taipei is a business city. It simply cannot function without transportation in all of its guises. Simply limiting it only limits the function of the city.
Of course if the plan is to establish more businesses in other areas, then I have no comments to make really. I wouldn’t dismiss the need to spread business to other areas when this one has already practically reached its realistic potential.
