Breaking News, World News and Taiwan News.

Updated Thursday, September 17, 2009 9:23 am TWN, The China Post news staff

Sponsors
▪	Find great real time deals on China Flights. Book flights to China or China domestic flights 24/7.
▪	Buy china wholesale products from reliable chinese wholesalers on DHgate.com!
▪	Save 75% for all hotels in Shanghai, Beijing and whole China. Lowest rates for Flights in China.
▪	Get the best deals for Guangzhou Hotels or choose from more than 10,000 hotels in 499 Chinese cities.

Three strikes for Taipei over faulty projects

Again, the plans started with a “good” idea. Dunhua Road runs north to south through the city and is a beautiful, tree-lined road. Serving as a major traffic artery, Dunhua North and South Roads seem like a great place for a bicycle path, but once again, the city leapt before it looked. The bike lane runs along the right shoulder of Dunhua Road, in the same lane as buses, cars and motorcycles. It is painted a different color than the rest of the road and marked with a bicycle logo. Unfortunately, non-cyclists are treating the lane as an extra parking area and trucks use it to unload goods. At stops, some buses have to dip into the cycle lane briefly, adding even more dangers.

In short, it's a great bicycle lane, but cyclists can't use it. Some might argue that enforcement is the key and undoubtedly, an army of cops issuing fines would improve things greatly. But Taipei doesn't have cops to spare.

A little “looking” at other nations' experiences would have saved Taipei a whole lot of money and hassle.

Most bicycle lanes around the world are not what you call an unmitigated success. European countries have experimented with bicycle lanes on the street and on nearby paths, but giving bicyclists their own lane has never been conclusively proven to reduce accidents. In fact, many reports claim the opposite; that segregated bicycle lanes cause more injuries as accidents are common at intersections where the path meets the road.

Every city has different characteristics and sometimes, as in the case of Kaohsiung City, bike paths work out quite well. In Taipei, which mostly does not feature separate lanes for motorcycles as Kaohsiung does, traffic is a kind of dance involving much merging and weaving, and while perhaps not a model for the rest of the world, Taipei's dancing traffic runs reasonably well.

More recently, a new European idea has emerged called “Shared Space” in which curbs, signs, lights and other signals are completely removed from roads in order to force road users to share. One might think this would lead to chaos, but actually, speeding and injuries have been reduced.

Taipei City has made great strides in becoming a more “livable” city. But, these three errors in planning and execution reflect badly on city administrators. Recent progress in infrastructure in Kaohsiung City has stolen the limelight from Taipei, and some are even musing that Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu will ride her popularity to become a DPP presidential candidate in 2012. A little research into effective city planning might have saved Taipei City roughly three million U.S. dollars as well as spared the city a lot of embarrassment.

1|2

Comments

September 17, 2009 linotw@

Bicycle Lane was not supposed to be with city streets/roads. Pedestrian lane on both sides of Tun Hwa road still have room. I think it is best to remove this so called "Bicycle Lane" and at the same time demote the person or engineer who planned this useless project. Honestly, I prefer to remove the whole Taipei Urban City Development Department and related sectors because they might also be behind the technical troubles of the new Neihu MRT and weak foundation of Maokong.