Are Taiwan's Roads Still a "Living Hell"?

I love Taiwan it's a stunningly beautiful country with wonderful people and amazing food seriously Taiwan Neo yen is one of my absolute favorite foods of all time and it's the country that made me realize that tea could be so much better than the slop the British make I used to work in the semiconductor industry so I would go to Taiwan fairly regularly and my company had an office there in fact I used to come to this part of the world so often often that after the birth of our first child we actually moved to Taiwan so that I could go on business trips without being away from the family for too long we really enjoyed living in Taiwan but there were a few things that kept us from wanting to live there permanently and one of the biggest things was Road Safety there were a lot of times where we just didn't feel safe on the streets of Taiwan we kept a Blog while living there and one of the last entries I wrote In 2011 before we moved away was this one we were standing on this corner one evening waiting for the light to change when we heard a car honking we turned around to see a taxi driver driving down the sidewalk to avoid traffic and he was upset and honking at us because we were in his way on the sidewalk and all of this happened directly in front of this police station which gives you an idea of how much traffic enforcement there was back then this all came to a head in 2022 when C CNN published this article calling Taiwan a living hell because of its abysmal road safety record at the time Road deaths in Taiwan were the highest they had been since 2013 every single day five pedestrians were injured or killed in taipe city alone and about half of those deaths were of people over the age of 65 the CNN article became headline news for weeks as Taiwanese people and foreigners alike would share their stories about the dangerous streets or like when they're turning like that like that's exactly like that's so reckless that's and I was told by my friends in Taiwan that this resulted in the acceleration of many Safe Streets initiatives especially in Taipei so while I was in Asia recently I decided to go to Taiwan for a few days to see some old friends to eat some great food and to see if the streets of Taipei were still a living hell and I'm happy to say that some things have gotten a lot better but it's not there yet the last time I was in Taiwan was in 2012 for computex of course so it's been a while but the one thing I noticed immediately the first time I stepped outside was that cars would actually stop when I was crossing the street even moped Riders and taxi drivers were waiting for for people to cross this would never ever happen in the past not even close drivers used to aggressively push through the intersection while people were trying to cross I was told that this was due to a new law that was introduced recently where all motor vehicles have to stay at least 3 m away from anybody in a pedestrian Crossing steep findes were introduced for any drivers failing to yield and most importantly those laws were actually being enforced oh and I also noticed that the garbage trucks play different music than they did [Applause] [Music] before one of the other things that Taipei has been trying to fix is a lack of sidewalks many sidewalks in Taipei were either too narrow or there was no sidewalk at all I saw a few roads like this one where the sidewalk had been widened and even bike Lanes installed which was nice to see I also never once saw a moped driver driving down the side walk never mind a taxi which used to be a common occurrence I went to this Street near our old apartment that I specifically remember having terrible sidewalks but unfortunately it was still the same and the sidewalks were still too narrow but just like in Japan the nicest places to walk in taipe are often on the really narrow streets which are usually referred to as Lanes here each lane is labeled with the closest Street number and the name of the road it connects to in Taipei the lanes and narrow streets are where some of the best stuff can be found too you will find lots of small businesses food stalls convenience stores and other interesting Urban amenities like this local park and playground but sadly the dumpling place that I used to go to on my way home from work was closed when I walked by I noticed that many of the streets were now painted with a green stripe and labeled as a sidewalk in an attempt to make them safer these predated the CNN article but they weren't here when I lived in Taipei and I'm not totally convinced that these earn Improvement on wider streets it makes sense to designate some of the space as a sidewalk but these painted areas were supposed to be only temporary until they were replaced with physical sidewalks but as they say there's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution a street this wide should definitely have a real sidewalk and those sidewalks should be a lot bigger than this little green stripe but on narrower streets I don't think these painted areas are that helpful I recently made a video about why the narrow streets in Japan are so great and one of the things I mentioned is that because there's so little car traffic people can just walk down the middle of the street Japan does sometimes have white lines like these to indicate where cars should drive but people are still encouraged to walk wherever they want but if you paint a very clear area and label it as sidewalk as is done here then it implies that drivers get the rest of the space and will get upset with you if you are walking in their air space I think on narrow streets the real solution for road safety isn't painted sidewalks but rather to do what Japan has done which is to significantly reduce car volumes these streets should never be used by through traffic the only cars that should ever be here are those of the people coming from or going to a destination in this neighborhood this can be done by making these areas a maze of one-way streets or they can install modal fil filters that prevent cars from passing but allow people walking and cycling to go through like is common in the Netherlands This is complicated in Taipei because there are so many people driving mopeds who would probably just go through the motal filters anyway but as long as they're driving slowly this may not be a problem the other major difference between Taiwanese and Japanese streets is parking Japan has strict laws against street parking so their streets are almost completely free of parked cars but these small streets in Taiwan are often full of Park cars and mopeds which makes the street much less inviting to people walking a lot of these cars should be moved to off street parking to allow more space on these narrow lanes and thankfully some of that is happening already I took this video of my typical walk home from our local Metro station in 2011 notice how much car parking there was on this street now it looks like this which is a huge Improvement and one thing that's much better about the streets in Taipei versus Tokyo is the trees the streets of Taipei have trees everywhere which makes them look so much nicer they also provide shade and the temperature is noticeably cooler on a street like this with good tree coverage the main roads have far fewer trees unfortunately but one thing I really like about Taipei is how the shops are set back from the road and covered by the buildings Above This provides excellent protection from the the sun and the rain two things that are very common in Taiwan I think that a lot of other hot countries could learn something from the design of the streets and roads in Taipei I did not visit in the hottest time of the year but it was still around 30° every day that I was visiting yet I almost never felt too hot because the sidewalks were covered on the main roads the trees provided shade in the lanes and the Metro was air conditioned so I like the way these areas are covered from the elements but one of of my major complaints when we lived here was that the sidewalks were often really uneven it was common to see huge jumps in the level of the sidewalk like this which were not just annoying they were a tripping Hazard so I was really happy to see that a lot of these had been smoothed out with ramps like this it was still not perfect but it's so much better than how it was for this visit I decided to stay in the shinyi district of Taipei I know I know shinyi is nothing like the rest of Taipei never mind mind the rest of Taiwan but it's always been the district with the best Urban Design and it's a really easy place to stay as a tourist shinyi is the financial district of Taipei it's where you'll find the offices of major International and Taiwanese financial and tech companies high-end shopping and the iconic skyscraper taipe 101 and I booked a hotel that was directly across the street as soon as I exited the metro station it was clear that this place had definitely changed since I was last here first of all there was a new bike lane and people were actually using it something that was almost unheard of when we lived in the city and next to the metro station exit was this ubike station with lots of bikes ubike is a typical docked Bike Share system like you'll find in many other cities but I was genuinely impressed by how many docks there were apparently there are already over, 1300 docks and there are plans to expand that to over 2,000 in the next few years what's nice is that bikes can be unlocked with the same card that is used for public transit but I didn't ride a bike while I was visiting Taipei for reasons that will become obvious later but regardless I prefer taking the metro anyway that's part of the reason why this channel is called not just bikes the other parts of shini were more or less the same this district has always had the best urbanism to begin with and it has always had the most Financial investment as well still it was nice to walk through the pedestrianized areas and they were even better at night with lights and decorations everywhere areas like these are the best parts of sheni though this giant car ad is maybe not the best use of space in a pedestrian area the inside of taipe 101 was just as I remembered it basically a glitzy shopping mall with high-end Brands where International electronics companies sell overpriced products back to the Taiwanese people who designed them for a short time my company's offices were in taipe 101 and apparently it was super fun during earthquakes but it's kept safe thanks to a huge mass damper system that keeps the building from swaying too much during earthquakes and typhoons and you can even go see it as a tourist and have the damper babies teach you about skyscraper engineering hi Taiwan is like the only country that would anthropomorphize a tuned Mass damper and I love it shinyi has some places that are really nice but other than taller trees this is the same as it was 15 years ago I was really hoping that some of these roads would have been narrow to make more room for bigger sidewalks parkettes or bike Lanes but no they're just as wide as ever there are some pedestrian Bridges through this area but a few of them were closed for repair when I was there so it meant waiting a long time at stop lights in order to cross but to be honest I didn't spend too much time in shiny when we lived here because it sometimes just feels like you're walking through an up up scale shopping mall the biggest thing I noticed is that there were a lot more people cycling when we lived here it was too dangerous to walk never mind ride a bicycle but this time I saw lots of people riding bicycles around the city this bicycle path was installed decades ago but it was actually in use and the uike station was a welcome addition some of the new bike lanes were pretty good like this one here the road was narrowed slightly to make room for a wider sidewalk and a bicycle lane which is great there were unfortunately no protected intersections but that's not really surprising because they're still pretty rare outside of the Netherlands though even at driveways the sidewalk and bike lane would drop down rather than staying at sidewalk level which is a bit disappointing on newly designed infrastructure other bike lanes were not so welld designed and would suddenly end for no apparent reason the worst example was this one which runs right into the stairs of a metro station which is really frustrating to see because there's PL room to build something better if they had taken away even just one of the eight lanes for Motor Vehicles in general the roads are extremely wide in Taipei not just in terms of the number of lanes but also the width of those Lanes so there should be lots of space to build proper bicycle Lanes but instead most new bike Lanes take space away from the already narrow sidewalks rather than taking any space away from Cars the most objectionable bike path I saw was was on Ren i road we used to live here and I still remember the Chinese for the address Tai Ren apologies for my terrible accent I promise it used to be better it's almost impossible to capture just how large this road is on camera because there are so many trees that obscure the view but you can see here that there are two lanes one way then a median with trees then another two lanes one of which is a bus lane then another median then another bus lane in a traffic lane then another median and then another two lanes if you look really far in the distance you can see just how far away the other side of the road is on this pedestrian Crossing so there is no shortage of space on Reni Road and yet when a bike path was put right in front of our old apartment it was put here on the sidewalk so that people cycling and people walking are in conflict with one another it's so frustrating that they couldn't even take just one of the many car Lanes to build a proper bicycle path this is a common theme across Taipei there are some small moves to make the city more bicycle friendly but they're only doing it where it doesn't inconvenience drivers one of the challenges of building cycling infrastructure though is that taipe is a city of mopeds they are absolutely everywhere around every corner you will find lines of parked mopeds and at every stoplight you will see a large group of moped Riders Taipei is what Amsterdam would look like if all of the bicycles were replaced with mopeds it's interesting that mopeds and Taipei are treated very similarly to the way bicycles are in many North American cities where you might find a bike box at a stoplight in North America you'll find a moped box in Taipei for the same reasons this makes mopeds more visible at stop lights and it allows moped Riders to do two-phase hook turns for safer left turns at Large intersections there are even mop head only Lanes along some major roads the same way you might find bike Lanes in other cities these Lanes also allow people cycling to use them but most people choose to ride on the sidewalk instead because mopeds and bicycles do not always mix well the Netherlands sometimes has problems with moped Riders driving too quickly in the bike Lanes in most of the country the Blue Plate snor fsen are allowed to ride in bike Lanes but these are supposed to be C at a maximum speed of 25 kmph however approximately 100% of all snorf Riders have illegally removed those speed limiters which is why a few years ago Amsterdam banned all types of mopeds from the majority of bike Lanes in the city moped Riders now use the roadway with all other motor vehicles and the speed limit on most streets in Amsterdam was recently lowered to 30 kmph so I'm used to seeing mopeds quite often but in Taipei they drive a lot faster I would guess somewhere where between 50 to 80 kmph moped Riders definitely present challenges for road safety because they drive very fast their movements are hard to predict and they sometimes also ride on sidewalks and in pedestrian areas also almost all of these mopeds are gasoline powered so they are very loud and there is a constant hum of moped noise on the streets of Taipei coming directly from Japan it was really jarring just how much traffic there was in Taipei Tokyo has many very wide roads like this one but there isn't a lot of car traffic whereas in Taipei the roads are busy most of the time and widening the roads hasn't made the traffic any better which is expected of course because Decades of research has proven that there's no solution to car traffic except viable alternatives to driving so one of the worst things you can do as a city is to let your buses get stuck in traffic and scenes like this are way too common in Taipei there's no excuse for this bus sitting in traffic when there is more than enough room for a bus lane Tai has some dedicated bus lanes like this one which are great but if they're going to reduce traffic congestion then they need to build a lot more of them so that it can be faster to take the bus than to sit in traffic but while taipe may not be building enough dedicated bus lanes they are investing heavily in their Metro System I was absolutely Blown Away by how many new Metro stations there were since we left in 2011 like the metro station in front of my hotel wasn't there when we lived in Taipei for reference this is what the metro map looked like in 2011 and this is what it looks like today I always used to have to take a taxi out to the airport when we lived here so the new airport express line opened in 2017 was very welcome and I've seen usb chargers on Transit but never Chi wireless charging pads you can even check in your bags for your flight in the city before boarding the MTR this should really be the norm in cities everywhere I visited my old Metro station it was great to see the new connection to the expanded jongo Shinu Line This would have saved me so much time getting to work if it existed in 2010 and taipe hasn't stopped building either there are an additional three new Metro projects that are currently under construction it's pretty rare to a city that is constantly building new Metro lines the way Taipei is it means that the Metro system is consistently getting better every year but it's also one of the best ways to keep construction cost down with constant construction a city can build local expertise in building Transit and when one project is done those experienced people can immediately move on to the next project but when your city Only builds New Rapid Transit once every decade or two every project is like Baby's First Transit project which requires Ires lots of expensive International contractors and results in lots of costly amateur mistakes that make it impossible to deliver on schedule Eglington LRT in Toronto the MRT also connects in several places to Taiwan High-Speed Rail which can take you to other cities on the island at up to 300 kmph the trains are reminiscent of the Japanese shinh kanzen both on the outside and on the inside there are trains departing frequently with about 160 trains traveling in both directions each day and with an ontime performance of over 99% I wasn't in town for very long though so I only had time to go One Stop on the high-speed train most of my travel was on the MRT and I was able to get everywhere I wanted to go by Metro while I was visiting well except my old office but I'll get to that later the system is made up of a mix of underground and aboveground lines as well as a few gondolas thrown in for good measure I know some people don't like elevated rail but I think it's nice to be able to see the city and not be stuck underground plus it's often cheaper to build than underground Metro lines which means more Transit is built which is a good thing right like most Metro systems you can pay for your trip by tapping a reloadable smart card but I opted for a 72-hour travel pass which comes as this funny circular plastic thing but it opens the fair Gates the same way the MRT trains are spacious clean and frequent most stations have platform screen doors which are safer but but can also prevent delays caused by garbage falling on the tracks the position of doors and where to wait is clearly marked and all trains have level boarding which makes getting on and off very easy the signage is really good in the stations and on the trains too and at interchange stations it is very common to have a cross-platform transfer I love it when Transit is designed well all transit should be as good as it is in Taipei one thing I don't like so much about the MRT though is that a lot of the metro station exits bring you right out to very wide busy roads this is something that also bothered me about Montreal where Metro Riders get out along some of the worst roads and strads in the whole city I would like to see Taipei building more Metro exits that go directly to the smaller streets especially pedestrianized streets because wide roads are not useful to people walking out of the metro and plus it's hard to get hit by a car when there aren't any cars one example of this done well is at Jong Shan Metro station this place has seen a nice upgrade since I was last here with this recently renovated linear Park connecting directly to the metro station it is much nicer to exit here rather than at the side of a busy road there's this open area here that can be set up for events and a little further down is this entrance to the underground book Street a walkway under the park with lots of independent bookstores cafes and cozy places to read Taipei has some really great pedestrian and low car streets too like this one in Wan haa and if you get out at the right Metro exit it takes you right here to the famous rainbow road crossing it was so funny to see people holding up traffic so that they could get a photo on the rainbow another benefit of the new 3 meter rule for pedestrian Crossings I guess wanoa is a great neighborhood there's the Red House theater an historic building that hosts markets exhibitions and performance and it's a hub for the Taipei LGBT community many of the shopping streets here are nearly carfree there are lots of interesting shops and restaurants in the shim anding shopping district but there was no way I was waiting in this line just for a bubble tea ah who am I kidding I did wait and it was excellent I noticed that there were way fewer bubble tea shops in Taipei this time around I guess most people have lost interest in drinking ridiculously sugary drinks these streets are but as usual with Taipei the best time to come is at night I'm a night person so this was the thing I loved most about living in Taipei it's a city that is most active at night at night time the weather is cooler and there are lots of people out on the streets almost everything is open late many shops and restaurants don't even open until the late morning or even the afternoon this is not a city for morning people this also presents challenges for road safety though because the majority of fatal crashes in any City happen at night and in Taiwan even kids are out really late into the evening one of the highlights of Taipei is the night markets I love night markets especially for the food there are skewers and more skewers cakes fresh fruit very fresh seafood fried balls chicken ass and tofu that purposefully smells like hot garbage the night markets are great but they're very popular so they're also very crowded so it's particularly annoying when and moped Riders push their way through a crowded Night Market this is something that taipe is going to have to enforce better if it's going to make the streets safer and more comfortable for people walking now I didn't really have time to go to any other cities in Taiwan but I did at least want to see my old office which was in jonga a district of new taipe city new taipe city is the name for the city that completely surrounds Taipei you might call it the suburbs of Taipei but there's really nothing Suburban about the design of most districts of new taipe city I was curious to see how jonga had changed so I took the Metro out there the first welcome change was that a new elevated metro line was built the yellow circular line which opened in 2020 the transfer from the orange line at jingan station is pretty bad though to get from one line to the other you have to just go up this escalator then go up this escalator then turn around and go up this ES escalator uh then go up these stairs then go up this escalator then go across this bridge and then you get to the platform easy I was told that because there was an elevated Highway here already that the elevated Metro needed to be built even higher which it's another example of how in Taiwan cars come first even if it means a much more difficult transfer for Metro Riders and in the end I couldn't go to the station closest to my old office anyway because the tracks had been damaged by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that hit Tai on in April otherwise this new metro line seemed really nice and it's great to see better public transit in New taipe City but unfortunately that's where the good stuff ended because as soon as I stepped outside it was pretty clear that jonga hadn't really improved much in the past 15 years it was very loud with very high volumes of traffic wide intersections and elevated highways the buses were completely off schedule because they got stuck in traffic so I had no idea when my bus would come so I decided to walk instead but that was a very bad idea the main roads had narrow uneven sidewalks made even narrower by dozens of parked mopeds the smaller streets like this one had lots of high-speed traffic and there were no sidewalks at all this is the kind of living hell street that the CNN article was talking about walking here felt genuinely dangerous and I had no interest in becoming the next traffic fatality statistic so I took a taxi to my old office this is what the street in front of my office looked like in 2010 and this is what it looked like when I was visiting this time around the good news is that the construction that's going on here is for a new metro line that will better connect jonga to the rest of the city which will be a very welcome addition this part of the city has a lot of traffic today and a ridiculous number of parked mopeds though I saw a lot more people cycling this time around I always liked the design of these Office Buildings because while one side may be on a road with lots of traffic the buildings are connected together by a series of pedestrian passs and car-free plazas so we were often able to go for lunch or to the shops without having to cross any of the busy roads it would be really nice if some of the exits from the new Metro could go directly to places like this but I suspect that a lot of these car-free areas are private property but these kind of buildings are pretty common in Taiwan and the electronic devices you use every day likely have components that were designed in places exactly like this one so it was interesting to visit chonga but this place still has a very long way to go before I would feel comfortable coming here again overall though I was pretty happy with the improvements that were made in Taipei over the past 15 years there's been sustained and dedicated progress in public transportation it's safer to walk and there's even the first steps towards proper cycling infrastructure but what was very obvious is that cars still rule Taipei the majority of public spaces devoted to space for cars there are very few restrictions on where cars can go and drivers are highly privileged so taipe has made some great improvements but it's all been done in places that don't inconvenience car drivers too much the problem is I think they're getting to the end of what can reasonably be done without taking more space away from Cars to improve pedestrian safety sidewalks will need to be wider there will need to be more carfree streets Crossing distances will need to be sh and traffic lights will need to start prioritizing people walking street parking is going to have to be removed and more will need to be done to prevent through traffic in neighborhoods more Transit Lanes need to be built to get buses out of traffic there will need to be more moped only lanes and even entire moped only streets I think and proper and consistent bicycle infrastructure is going to need to be built without making the narrow sidewalks even smaller and the rest of Taiwan is going to have to catch up to Taipei all of these things will require inconveniencing motorists and taking space away from Cars so I think the next decade will really be a turning point for Taiwan will they succeed in building places that are built for people or will the road still be a living hell for anybody outside of a car that is the choice that the Taiwanese people are going to have to make Taiwan has been in the news a lot lately because of geopolitical issues but also because of the critical importance of Taiwan semiconductor industry to almost every aspect of our modern world but as with any international news coverage it's hard to know which news outlets are trustworthy which is why I get my news from ground news the sponsor of this video ground news is a website an app designed to give readers an easy datadriven way to read the news every story comes with a clear breakdown of the political bias factuality and ownership of the sources reporting all backed by ratings from three Independent News monitoring organizations ground news provides a lot of extra information in a neat and organized way and I really like how you can see how different news sites report on the same story like this one about growing tensions between China and Taiwan the trend details are here along the right hand side 22 News sites reported on this story and ground news show the political bias distribution factuality and ownership information for this story you can quickly see that 79% of news outlets have a high factuality and only 5% are independent I find it funny that the little old Winnipeg Free Press was the first to break this news story nice work Canada ground news also makes it very easy to compare headlines to see how these biases might affect framing for example on the right the New York Post includes the quote gross interference it's not exactly clear who says this but it is eye-catching then on the left Politico Europe specifically mentions Slovakia presumably because they're more focused on EUR related news another feature I really like is the blind spot feed which highlights stories that are disproportionately covered by one side of the political Spectrum I really like this way of presenting the news and it's a great way to stay informed while navigating an increasingly polarized and Consolidated news environment if this sounds interesting to you then you should probably take advantage of their 40% off promotion for the ground news Vantage plan which gives you unlimited access to all of these powerful features go to ground. news/ knous bikes or follow the link in the description to subscribe for only $5 a month and help an independent news platform working to make the media landscape more transparent

2024-09-08 22:27

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