I’m riding like 400km Youbike per month in taipei, ist just faster than anything else - day before yesterday even 50km in a single day. I usually average 16km/h in distance (meaning I ride at around 25km/h)… same in Taichung. It’s faster than scooter in the inner city as you are allowed to use bike lanes and streets whatever is faster.
But yeah to get to the mountains car makes sense. I think Taiwan should stop subsidizing fuel and rather charge a bit for it, but subsidize public transport, Diesel/gas for farmers and industrial demand and subsidize Carsharing in a way that it encourages overnight trips or getting it done you drive to mountains and take another car back from mountains as public transport to remote locations doesn’t make much sense..
Also subsidize trains/gaotie. That’s just the cheapest way with good comfort.
The metro could be improved by going to more locations still in taipei.. there should be a real outer ring and inner ring…
But with Iran war going on I don’t expect any improvement on anything anymore… it will be rather fighting to keep the economy from not crashing.
That’s kind of an excuse, there are smart cars and covered scooters that protect from the elements without taking up so much space. A lot of people are driving big SUVs because they feel cool and powerful
This is a major issue in Taiwan, and a place where SUVs excel. The SUV arms race has been an issue in other countries as well, but Taiwan has the extra issue of very dangerous infrastructure and drivers.
Convenient, but for most people an SUV sized closed storage is not necessary. People going to Costco from the mountains once a week or month will benefit, but people who live in the cities don’t really need that SUV.
Yeah, it really depends on where one lives and where one is going. A motorcycle for me was more convenient than public transport in Ktown, by far. But another person could do very well without. Youbike is fantastic
One can visualize the Chinese army getting bogged down in crazy traffic and accidents and aunties who just DGAF (not getting off the scooter in the market, not waiting for the train, why stop for a tank division?)
Half the riding time is going to be sitting at a red light, its pretty bad on a scooter already but bikes cant keep up you will be caught by a lot of red lights. In Taipei anyway. Maybe its different in the other cities.
For me its the inconsistency of cycling that makes it a pain the ass/ dangerous.
You cannot entirely cycle on wide pavements. A lot of the time the pavements are narrow or full of scooters. So you have to go on the road at some points..and then you have all parked cars and bollocks to deal with.
By not going straight. Go straight as long as you have green light, then go sideways until it turns red. Use cycleways to get over the red light that stops cars and scooters. Plan that beforehand. And then there is of course the Riversides…
My best average speed at night is around 19-20km/hour but then I’m going 30km/h on Youbike. With my road bike going 35kmh average if not stopped and taking it as fast high aerobic training ride I can be even faster…
But yeah I tend to avoid rush hours.
I had some friends who managed over 30km per hour of distance in Taichung. But they pushed 350w when riding and are always up for podiums on the races and may have been lenient on the rules…
It’s not clever, vs simple answers to your question, is it? And does it really go out the window? Say you got a baby - might you not (reasonably) consider a car rather than strapping the baby onto a scooter for rainy taipei weather with crap drivers? Is that being clever, or making a reasonable tradeoff of comfort and safety over convenience?
As I previously said. Cars are not practical here for daily use. Thats just how it is.
They have a role but scooters are covering most daily situations and yea incase you haven’t noticed nobody cares about popping a baby on a scooter.
They should be even less practical and parking on the side of the road, on public crossings etc should get you fined but the country is a joke when it comes to this.
It depends where. Not everyone lives in a large city with good public transport.
Using a scooter would be a big inconvenience for me and make it quote difficult to do the commitments I have.
My commute on scooter is 3x and public transport is 5x the time I need in my car. 20+ km one way, only with the car I can use the highway.
One also does not have any protection on a scooter. Several family members had severe injuries from accidents which were not their fault.
Electricity in Taiwan is also heavily subsidised, so rich people are also subsidised driving their massive luxury EVs, too.
It is also heavily (~80%) fossil-fuel generated, so driving an EV here does little for the environment other than shifting the source of emissions. Inasmuch as an EV is powered by coal (about half of Taiwan’s fossil energy mix), it’s arguably worse for the environment than an internal combustion engine.
On a wider note, I am often confounded by enviro-lefties (in general - I’m not casting aspersions on anyone in this thread!) who call for fuel and electricity subsidies to be ended in Taiwan. Rich people in SUVs would be best-placed to afford the resulting price rises, and the less well-off would be the hardest it - a massively regressive move. Even more confusing is these calls often come from the same people who proclaim that wages are too low in Taiwan. To which I always ask, too low compared to what? Clearly, in their minds, not in comparison to fuel prices at the pump and energy bills that they want to go up, too!
yes - as are many other things. Making sure energy is cheap is the best way to have cheap cost of living. It’s much better to subsidize transport and energy vs subsidizing social whatever for the economy and in the long run everyone (prevents a lot of paperwork, admin, and cheating the system).
In my eyes it just pays off more to have great public transport in cities over trying to build everything for cars. Thanks there aren’t enough parking spots so people use scooter (way cheaper for the socienty) or public transport. Actually it could be that scooters are better from cost/performance standpoint for an economy over public transport. Unlike cars they need much less space on the street so enable a much higher throuput of people on the same infrastructure. Yes they cause more injuries due to accidents - but I think that cost is cheap in comparison to cars everything considered.
China is doing great when taking down old suburbs and rebuilding them with skyscrapers. It allows them to build a great subway system by having short ways and enough people per subway stop living or working there.
Also forbidding fuel power scooters is great - battery powered is good enough. And fuel powered cars in cities are a nuisance too. Life quality is much better in cities with great public transport over cities which depend on cars for the majority.
I don’t think the metro system in Taipei is good. Way too many places not connected. Well much better than Taichung - but in this regard Taichung is simply a desaster.
EVs are still more environmentally friendly (whatever that means - less environmentally unfriendly perhaps?) than internal combustion vehicles even if the EVs are run off fossil fueled derived electricity. I’m no “enviro-lefty”, by the way. EVs produce fewer overall emissions.
I agree that in a city environment especially, zero-emissions cars make life more pleasant for everyone else streetside. There are some objections about increased particulate emissions due EVs being heavier (causing more tyre wear and road-surface wear vs a comparably sized IC vehicle) but I suspect that with the absence of exhaust particulates this at least evens out, and probably actually tilts in EV’s favour.
However, the fact remains that if that EV is charged with electricity from fossil fuels, it is contributing to the claggy polluted days we get when the coal plants are running hard, which affects everyone, not just people streetside. So
Ok, fair point. In theory, yes, because fossil fuel power plants should be more efficient in converting fuel into electricity than IC engines are at converting fuel into motion (although in the case of coal plants, not by much, as far as I am aware. Modern gas plants are significantly more efficient however). But there are other variables such as transmission losses to contend with, so I believe the answer is “it depends”. It’s entirely possible that here in Taiwan a compact geography and correspondingly short transmission distances, the efficiency (and therefore environmental) gain is there to be had.
I certainly don’t support any government subsidies for EVs. That’s just been a cash cow for a few billionaires who are smarter than the average politician.
