Taipei's Worst Bottleneck

Life Cars & Motorcycles
#1

I would like to submit that the intersection of JhongJhen Rd & HuanHe Rd (ShuiYuan Highway entrance) during morning rush-hour is the worst bottleneck in Taipei.

At this intersection there are 5 northbound lanes on HuanHe (1 is the ramp from the Shoulang Bridge from JhongYongHe, 2 are the northbound thru lanes and 2 more are the right-turn only lanes, from which cars don’t turn right during morning rush hour, but ignore the arrows and go straight) merging with 2 right-turn lanes off JhongJhen Rd onto HuanHe (which is in fact only 1 lane, but cars from the middle lane push into the right-turn lane) all fighting for the 3 northbound lanes on ShuiYuan Highway. That’s 7 lanes merging into 3. At the top of the hill, those 3 lanes have to merge into just 2 to make room for another on-ramp from JingMei. What an absolute clusterf*ck.

Morning rush hour there has gotten progressively worse as the build-up in Xinbei continues. There was a noticeable increase in traffic when they finished the Ankeng Bridge, which dumps even more cars onto HuanHe than were already there. I shudder to think what it’s going to be like when MeiHe City is finished. I think that’s 2000 more residential units in the area.

I have a bird’s eye view of this intersection from my apartment. Between 7-9am, cars are backed up as far as I can see, across both bridges and down HuanHe.

Any other candidates?

#2

During sunny weekends the Highway 3 to Highway 5 on-ramps are backed up for kilometers from Xizhi and Muzha

#3

The worst merge in Taipei must be Keelung Rd at the Hsin Yi intersection where six lanes merge into three with no guide lines, no merge sign and no directions. Its push and shove all the way.

#4

Yeah - and that Keelung road and Xin Hai road intersection, where the lights on Keelung road last for over 2 minutes on red, and 40 seconds on green.
My personal non-favourite is the raised expressway above Jin Ping road in Yong He all the way through Banchiao to XinJuang and beyond. Forget the M25. Chris Rea should spend a few months travelling on that road and then write a song:

“This ain’t no upwardly mobile freeway,
Oh no, this is fucking incompetence and sheer fucking mayhem.”

#5

Anywhere around 101 where they insist on stoplight signals for pedistrians only where all cars going all directions must stop and wait for pedistrians to liesurely do their thing. Not like it is urgent for pedistrians to go crossways instead of walking like pedistrians do everywhere else in Taipei by crossing at the signal in one direction first following by the other direction. Assinine. It adds 20 minutes and a whole lot of headache to the drive if passing through the area.