I don’t believe they removed it because of safety concerns. In any case, safety was really down on the list and only used to sell the removal to some voters. I think their number one priority, if not the only one, was to move more vehicles. I mean, more private vehicles. I am not familiar enough with the area before and after, but did the removal of the bus underpass allowed for “one more lane, bro” for private cars? I bet it did. To surprise of no one: it looks like it backfired.
Regarding safety, roundabouts are a bit problematic on humongous roads but at least crashes are usually at lower speeds. There might be less crashes now, but I am not sure about the number of crashes with injuries, or worse, in the long term.
True, but using not giving a shit about training and enforcement as an argument in favour of not using something is a poor argument. I am not saying it is your argument, it is Taiwan’s justification. Same as it will take 100 years to fix our urban design, so we better don’t even start doing it.
That was my point also, so I don’t really get what he was arguing. In fact, by keeping the original roundabout in place, but put in the same amount of traffic police to enforce the proper usage of the roundabout, not only would accidents have dropped, no extra $200 million NTD would be spent on tearing the traffic circle down, the buses would still get their express underground pass, no commuter would had to suffer through construction, and future congestion either.
Anyway, outside of Carmel Indiana, many US cities are doing roundabouts wrong as well.
After filling in the dedicated bus tunnel, demolishing the roundabout, and forcing 6 times the amount of police personnel to direct traffic, the number of accidents are about the same, but the number of severe injuries increased. That is because despite having more police on site, without the roundabout to slow down traffic at the junction and reducing the numbers of dangerous points of conflict, when accidents happen they are a lot worse. That’s not even talking about the traffic hell this has made for public transportation commuters that had to cross the river to get into Taipei city.
And the city has dedicated even more police to harass citizens who are documenting the change and collecting data to study and report on the effects of demolishing the roundabout. It’s like the American Fork PD harassing Reckless Ben, but instead of Josh, Mayor Chiang is the one calling the TCPD.
Can anyone name a single things accomplished during the Chiang mayorship that has made Taipei City clearly better? I honestly can’t think of a single thing . . .
Just to be clear: I am certain he will be re-elected as the Taipei electorate is consistently fascinated by KMT royalty / lineage as well as handsome Han men over actual governing competence. The only exceptions were Chen’s victory in the 1990s and then Ko taking the keys away from the KMT for a while in the 2010s.
