Two things that have built the Taiwan economy
1)The scooter: people mover, furniture mover, versatile as hell. Try to get rid of those and you will shut down Taiwan
2)The blue trucks: although the drivers are demented, where would we be without the blue truck?
What causes congestion and pollution in Taiwan is simply the population. If there are proper parking facilties put in place for motorbikes, or a quota on parking spaces, and if you do not park your bike correctly, then it should be towed, this would help.
Here again this is something the Taipei city officals should do. If they allow bikes to be parked anyway on footpaths, then people will park them anyway they want or is convienent for them.
If I live in Hsin Tien and work in Taipei, do I walk to Taipei, move to Taipei city (double my rent), take the bus(2 hrs), take the MRT and then have to take a bus, or get there on my bike in twenty minutes.
Also if everybody started using public transport, it would be overstretched, and could not cope with the volume of people. Look at the MRT in the morning, isn’t it chaotic enough already, and look at the place after the MRT was shut, buses blocking up every road?
Traffic, pollution and congestion would be solved if maybe 2/3 of the population moved to China, No matter what country you go to, or what the population is, you will get pollution, pollution is related to pollution density.
But in fairness, the government should get stricter with omissions from automobiles. I think some older scooters are running on diesel or crude oil, as are the older buses with the 4.5 litre diesel engines, with automatic clutches that just guzzle the fuel in slow moving traffic.
Maybe Ma Ying Joe should do some other cool stuff for Taipei to put in on the world stage like bringing in electric buses, staggering times people finish work, banning trucks (anything over 4 wheels) from driving on the city roads during rush hour(7.30-9.00 and 5-7), reduce car parking spaces in Taipei, so people have no choice but to use public transport.
Already it is difficult to park your bike on Chung Shau/Dun Hwa, and there is no way to park a car; why cause there are no parking spaces, and if you do let your bike even a wheel out of place in the zoned parking spaces, it will be towed.
This has made Chung shau actually look like a nice open clean street.
Also I was at the traffic lights one morning and the number of people going to work in cars, with only one person in them was astounding. The way to solve that is to not allow cars with one passenger into the city, or on one day only allow cars with a tag having an odd number into the city and even numbered tags on the other days.
Or better still just increase the tax on gasoline, and use this money to repair the trenches in some of the roads (Pao Chiao Rd HsinTien) or just to make Taiwan cleaner.
I ride a scooter on the footpath… I am careful…but if somebody rides dangerously on the footpath…they should be throw off the footpath and the road indefinelty…