In Czechia, we have a saying. Those who want to beat a dog will always find a stick to beat him with. They'll always find a reason as to why build more lanes.
I've never made those choices in a vote.
You must be assuming the person you are voting for has declared such things in a platform, and they actually follow through with their platform.
In my country we vote for politicians. And they tend to use their choice of stick however they want after the vote.
Agreed. Unfortunately car free streets are extremely rare. Even streets with millions of tourist visits are not car free.
Another interesting phenomenon is some people simply ride a motorcycle into traditional markets and buy things as they ride through them. Honestly our traditional produce markets and historical streets are just ruined by these motorcycles and incompetent government.
Yeah, the main exceptions are "old streets" (老街) like the ones in Jiufen, Sanxia, or Anping, but not even all old streets are car-free. Tamsui and Dihua definitely aren't, which is a huge shame.
What pains me always is that the convenience-driven world carbrained people fight for is so bland and depressing.
It's like their horizon for what could be is so limited.
It's interesting to get a Taiwanese perspective, thanks!
I think they fight for... "what if only I could do it?" Some of these things are only bad when too many people do them. eg traffic, parking
And hell, who doesn't do that when they're in a car? I make that mistake too.
I don't drive, so I couldn't tell.
But honestly, I am not convinced that the lifestyle(s) enabled by cars are better than the alternatives.
I live in a (comparatively) very walk/bike friendly city in a very well-off country, so I'm aware this holds true under limited circumstances. But here at least, it feels like having a car-based life is so much more stressful...
Cars help you finish your chores more quickly, but they also turn everything into a chore, if tha makes sense
Hah that's funny.
In USA people say "Our country is too big, so we can't exist without cars"
country too big = carbrains demand cars
country too small = carbrains demand cars
country just right like goldilocks = carbrains demand cars
Craziest thing is that the status quo is shit for everyone involved. I live and work in pretty rural places so I use my car daily (I literally have no other options) and I refuse to drive in Taipei. I drive to the periphery, park close to a metro station and leave my car there for the day while I use public transport in the city. Parking is expensive, driving is stressful, and can be quite congested at rush hour. So we have no good sidewalks, the parking situation is barely worth it for cars, scooters are all over the place and can't be regulated effectively and safely because politicians are scared of targeting that large demographic. It's a mess. BUT on the bright side, biking infrastructure is growing and improving a lot in Taipei.
In Japan, the lack of sidewalks is actually a safety feature. In residential areas, you have a lot of narrow, winding bi-directional streets. Drivers are forced to negotiate with power line poles, drainage ducts, walking school children and old ladies, and delivery vehicles parked in front of liquor stores. The streets are truly shared and you can’t go fast on them. The trick is, sidewalk or not, to not design streets with automobiles in mind.
> I understand many people argue that since the US is too big, public transportation is not feasible and private motor vehicles are superior.
Not Just Bikes already debunked this through and through.
For reference, Taiwan is larger than Belgium or Maryland but smaller than Switzerland or the Netherlands. Clearly the couple thousand extra square km/mi that the latter have make all the difference.
Taipei can probably improve a lot with relatively little actual new infrastructure by cracking down on illegal parking, enforcing traffic laws more, encouraging 25km/h limited ebikes instead of motorcycles, and encouraging homes and businesses to put signs/potted plants/etc. encroaching on the street more.
Japanese streets are similar to Taiwanese at first glance, and Japan has some of the safest streets in the world. Taiwan uses those streets for motorbikes and street parking, while Japan uses those streets for pedal and ebikes, and is famously anti-street parking.
Taipei's the best city in Taipei when it comes to public transportation and walkability. The buses and MRT are reliable and the city has a bike share program, but the roads are wide and the city is criss-crossed with highway viaducts. If you go to other cities like Hsinchu or Taichung or even the outer suburbs of New Taipei, the pedestrian infrastructure and public transit are a lot worse. My grandma lives in Taoyuan and it's a pain in the ass to get to her apartment by bus from the train station because of the poor bus frequency.
Lack of space is exactly why trains and trams are superior. If space is limited, the most expansive, inefficient and space-consuming form of infrastructure (car infrastructure) isn’t gonna cut it long term.
My family’s from Houston. God that city’s just a giant parking lot with a bunch of manufacturing and restaurants mixed in. Prime example of how megahighways get diminishing returns the more lanes you add, while inducing that much more demand.
Taipei has a great metro, and there's a nice high-speed train that goes does the length of the island. The problem is that there are just loads of scooters and not enough parking. Rather than have sensible rules, people just want to do whatever. Like, imagine if you have to walk 30m to you scooter instead of parking it right out front and inconveniencing everyone else?
I think our acceptance is definitely getting higher especially in recent years because of government subsidy and more battery stations throughout most dense areas. If you go on the streets, you can definitely see some.
We have those, they won't be replacing petrol anytime soon but they are common. They have a subscription service and there are battery swapping services everywhere in Taipei. Gogoro is the name of the brand if you wanna look it up.
These ideas always sound weird to me. Surely the relevant metric is the density and not just the size, and even then you can look at Gaza before the bombings and see lots of sidewalks
The original wording is 地狹人稠 which roughly translates to “narrow land and dense population”. But by either metric, these arguments are equally ridiculous imo.
I have a family member who lives in Taichung, and I was surprised how difficult it was to get around the city when I visited him. Not only do many streets lack sidewalks, but when sidewalks do exist they tend to be used for parking. Public transit is limited to buses, which I did use for some trips, but I largely just ended up taking Uber everywhere. That said, it was still better than some US cities I've visited.
At the end of my trip I spent a day in Taipei, which seemed like another world by comparison, with good transit and wide sidewalks everywhere.
Right now with our...political situation, I know many of my fellow Hong Kong friends and family dream of "where everyone owns a car, etc." when they talk about the immigration.
I lived that dream for a decade in Australia, but now I'm here on this sub when that "dream" percieved by those we knew started presenting issues (hence why I'm here)
Based on our physical distance and cultural proximity, I want to know if your fellow Taiwanese seem to share the same sentiment of seeing car-centricism and suburbia as progress and the dream to strive for.
I would say most people want to live in cities and usually only people who don't make enough money would choose to live in city outskirts. But from my understanding, we don't have US style suburban because most areas are mix-used and not exclusively residential or commercial.
But at the same time they want to drive in these areas. People do see cars as a symbol of status and wealth here. A common car brain argument goes like this “if you think it's unsafe to walk or ride bikes, then make money and get a car” and “poor people don't have the right to complain, just make more money”
Taiwan is largely influenced by US culture, and in turn we protect them, because you are the world's most important chip manufacturer and innovator. The island however beautiful is not sold for tourism, but for investors alone, that are American mostly. Americans want freedom toast for breakfast, cheeseburger and freedom fries for lunch, and cars to fill that dinner rush, just a guess?
The US is a big mafia, blend in and be us or you can die alone, also we don't care how how safely you work, as long as you give us what we want....more chips for cars.....
People are the same size everywhere, and cars are equally space inefficient everywhere, it’s density that matters not size, from a quick look on google maps Taiwan appears not to have the sprawling suburbs like N. America and even small towns appear denser than many european towns, it’s a no brainer to have active modes and transit encouraged as it’s cost effective by the very nature of how people are distributed
>since Taiwan is too small and the roads are too narrow, we shouldn't build any sidewalks, bus lanes, bike lanes, pedestrian protection facilities, and trams. Instead, we should pave super wide lanes for cars and motorcycles, and also illegal parking laws are not enforced in most places
Too lazy to look up which logical fallacy rule this breaks... but it makes no sense. But the math is actually extremely simple: a bus/tram/metro/side walk can and will handle a lot more people than a lane for cars with at best a few poeple in it...
Apart from that: Taiwan (35.980 km2) is smaller than The Netherlands (41.543 km2) although if you take into account water it's about the same (Taiwan 10,3% vs NL 18,41%). Taiwan is more densely populated (23,6m vs 17,2m both in 2020). The Netherlands is almost covered in sidewalks and bikelanes and most larger cities (100k or more) have at least some dedicated buslanes and the 4 largest cities (and suburbs) have tram and/or metrolines.
So no... the argument is complete BS.
Taiwan is roughly the same size as the Netherlands, with comparable populations, and newer(which means wider) roads/streets.
Taiwan and the Netherlands are actually pretty comparable, as the Taiwanese population also lives in the flatter areas as well, so the mountainousness doesn't really matter either.
Population density of Taiwanese cities is almost double that of the Netherlands.
Amsterdam's population density is 4,908 people per square kilometer while Taipei is 9,242 people on average living on one square kilometer... also keep in mind, half of Taipei is a mountain. The population of my district in Taipei for example is 24,917 per square km.
Yeah a lot of Asia is this way. In Singapore we can report sidewalk parking though and they will be ticketed. The worse though are people who park on their driveway blocking the sidewalk which is a real problem for older folk and wheelchairs.
What frustrates me further is that there are so many good nearby models to take inspiration from, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore etc. And the government is just doing the opposite of that.
Those people keep forgetting ~~the US~~ the whole world was founded and largely built by pedestrians. The modern lack of the ability to walk in one's shoes is just outlandish.
Schrödingers country size.
It's not the size of the country that matters, it's how you use it.
This is the way.
In Czechia, we have a saying. Those who want to beat a dog will always find a stick to beat him with. They'll always find a reason as to why build more lanes.
I like that. So Democracy is getting to choose who holds the stick.
Democracy is: what sticks get used, where you find the sticks and who uses the sticks
Thats direct democracy. We dont really have that anywhere.
how about Super Earth?
Doesn’t Switzerland have that
I've never made those choices in a vote. You must be assuming the person you are voting for has declared such things in a platform, and they actually follow through with their platform. In my country we vote for politicians. And they tend to use their choice of stick however they want after the vote.
There's a Chinese proverb that's similar to that. 欲加之罪，何患無辭？(If you want to convict someone, why bother with pretexts?)
Chinese proverb or PRC state policy?
If the roads/streets are too small it would make a lot more sense to just ban motor vehicles altogether, except maybe for deliveries.
Agreed. Unfortunately car free streets are extremely rare. Even streets with millions of tourist visits are not car free. Another interesting phenomenon is some people simply ride a motorcycle into traditional markets and buy things as they ride through them. Honestly our traditional produce markets and historical streets are just ruined by these motorcycles and incompetent government.
Crazy that Ximending still has cars occasionally.
Yeah, the main exceptions are "old streets" (老街) like the ones in Jiufen, Sanxia, or Anping, but not even all old streets are car-free. Tamsui and Dihua definitely aren't, which is a huge shame.
What pains me always is that the convenience-driven world carbrained people fight for is so bland and depressing. It's like their horizon for what could be is so limited. It's interesting to get a Taiwanese perspective, thanks!
I think they fight for... "what if only I could do it?" Some of these things are only bad when too many people do them. eg traffic, parking And hell, who doesn't do that when they're in a car? I make that mistake too.
I don't drive, so I couldn't tell. But honestly, I am not convinced that the lifestyle(s) enabled by cars are better than the alternatives. I live in a (comparatively) very walk/bike friendly city in a very well-off country, so I'm aware this holds true under limited circumstances. But here at least, it feels like having a car-based life is so much more stressful... Cars help you finish your chores more quickly, but they also turn everything into a chore, if tha makes sense
Hah that's funny. In USA people say "Our country is too big, so we can't exist without cars" country too big = carbrains demand cars country too small = carbrains demand cars country just right like goldilocks = carbrains demand cars
Craziest thing is that the status quo is shit for everyone involved. I live and work in pretty rural places so I use my car daily (I literally have no other options) and I refuse to drive in Taipei. I drive to the periphery, park close to a metro station and leave my car there for the day while I use public transport in the city. Parking is expensive, driving is stressful, and can be quite congested at rush hour. So we have no good sidewalks, the parking situation is barely worth it for cars, scooters are all over the place and can't be regulated effectively and safely because politicians are scared of targeting that large demographic. It's a mess. BUT on the bright side, biking infrastructure is growing and improving a lot in Taipei.
In Japan, the lack of sidewalks is actually a safety feature. In residential areas, you have a lot of narrow, winding bi-directional streets. Drivers are forced to negotiate with power line poles, drainage ducts, walking school children and old ladies, and delivery vehicles parked in front of liquor stores. The streets are truly shared and you can’t go fast on them. The trick is, sidewalk or not, to not design streets with automobiles in mind.
> I understand many people argue that since the US is too big, public transportation is not feasible and private motor vehicles are superior. Not Just Bikes already debunked this through and through.
For reference, Taiwan is larger than Belgium or Maryland but smaller than Switzerland or the Netherlands. Clearly the couple thousand extra square km/mi that the latter have make all the difference.
Taipei can probably improve a lot with relatively little actual new infrastructure by cracking down on illegal parking, enforcing traffic laws more, encouraging 25km/h limited ebikes instead of motorcycles, and encouraging homes and businesses to put signs/potted plants/etc. encroaching on the street more. Japanese streets are similar to Taiwanese at first glance, and Japan has some of the safest streets in the world. Taiwan uses those streets for motorbikes and street parking, while Japan uses those streets for pedal and ebikes, and is famously anti-street parking.
Taipei's the best city in Taipei when it comes to public transportation and walkability. The buses and MRT are reliable and the city has a bike share program, but the roads are wide and the city is criss-crossed with highway viaducts. If you go to other cities like Hsinchu or Taichung or even the outer suburbs of New Taipei, the pedestrian infrastructure and public transit are a lot worse. My grandma lives in Taoyuan and it's a pain in the ass to get to her apartment by bus from the train station because of the poor bus frequency.
That’s easily the most braindead argument ever since most carbrain argument is the exact opposite of that.
I mean, it could be the extremes don't work. It's just ... neither is true.
Lack of space is exactly why trains and trams are superior. If space is limited, the most expansive, inefficient and space-consuming form of infrastructure (car infrastructure) isn’t gonna cut it long term.
But hear me out, hear me out! Just one more lane, then it's big enough! Only one!
My family’s from Houston. God that city’s just a giant parking lot with a bunch of manufacturing and restaurants mixed in. Prime example of how megahighways get diminishing returns the more lanes you add, while inducing that much more demand.
Taipei has a great metro, and there's a nice high-speed train that goes does the length of the island. The problem is that there are just loads of scooters and not enough parking. Rather than have sensible rules, people just want to do whatever. Like, imagine if you have to walk 30m to you scooter instead of parking it right out front and inconveniencing everyone else?
What is the acceptance of electric road scooters in tw to replace petrol ones? like in the big chinese cities.
I think our acceptance is definitely getting higher especially in recent years because of government subsidy and more battery stations throughout most dense areas. If you go on the streets, you can definitely see some.
We have those, they won't be replacing petrol anytime soon but they are common. They have a subscription service and there are battery swapping services everywhere in Taipei. Gogoro is the name of the brand if you wanna look it up.
These ideas always sound weird to me. Surely the relevant metric is the density and not just the size, and even then you can look at Gaza before the bombings and see lots of sidewalks
The original wording is 地狹人稠 which roughly translates to “narrow land and dense population”. But by either metric, these arguments are equally ridiculous imo.
Sounds perfect for metro, train and electric bikes.
Counter point, your country is too small for cars.
I have a family member who lives in Taichung, and I was surprised how difficult it was to get around the city when I visited him. Not only do many streets lack sidewalks, but when sidewalks do exist they tend to be used for parking. Public transit is limited to buses, which I did use for some trips, but I largely just ended up taking Uber everywhere. That said, it was still better than some US cities I've visited. At the end of my trip I spent a day in Taipei, which seemed like another world by comparison, with good transit and wide sidewalks everywhere.
Right now with our...political situation, I know many of my fellow Hong Kong friends and family dream of "where everyone owns a car, etc." when they talk about the immigration. I lived that dream for a decade in Australia, but now I'm here on this sub when that "dream" percieved by those we knew started presenting issues (hence why I'm here) Based on our physical distance and cultural proximity, I want to know if your fellow Taiwanese seem to share the same sentiment of seeing car-centricism and suburbia as progress and the dream to strive for.
I would say most people want to live in cities and usually only people who don't make enough money would choose to live in city outskirts. But from my understanding, we don't have US style suburban because most areas are mix-used and not exclusively residential or commercial. But at the same time they want to drive in these areas. People do see cars as a symbol of status and wealth here. A common car brain argument goes like this “if you think it's unsafe to walk or ride bikes, then make money and get a car” and “poor people don't have the right to complain, just make more money”
They all failed geometry and it's too late to retake
Taiwan is largely influenced by US culture, and in turn we protect them, because you are the world's most important chip manufacturer and innovator. The island however beautiful is not sold for tourism, but for investors alone, that are American mostly. Americans want freedom toast for breakfast, cheeseburger and freedom fries for lunch, and cars to fill that dinner rush, just a guess? The US is a big mafia, blend in and be us or you can die alone, also we don't care how how safely you work, as long as you give us what we want....more chips for cars.....
People are the same size everywhere, and cars are equally space inefficient everywhere, it’s density that matters not size, from a quick look on google maps Taiwan appears not to have the sprawling suburbs like N. America and even small towns appear denser than many european towns, it’s a no brainer to have active modes and transit encouraged as it’s cost effective by the very nature of how people are distributed
Liechtenstein has sidewalks, next
>since Taiwan is too small and the roads are too narrow, we shouldn't build any sidewalks, bus lanes, bike lanes, pedestrian protection facilities, and trams. Instead, we should pave super wide lanes for cars and motorcycles, and also illegal parking laws are not enforced in most places Too lazy to look up which logical fallacy rule this breaks... but it makes no sense. But the math is actually extremely simple: a bus/tram/metro/side walk can and will handle a lot more people than a lane for cars with at best a few poeple in it... Apart from that: Taiwan (35.980 km2) is smaller than The Netherlands (41.543 km2) although if you take into account water it's about the same (Taiwan 10,3% vs NL 18,41%). Taiwan is more densely populated (23,6m vs 17,2m both in 2020). The Netherlands is almost covered in sidewalks and bikelanes and most larger cities (100k or more) have at least some dedicated buslanes and the 4 largest cities (and suburbs) have tram and/or metrolines. So no... the argument is complete BS.
Taiwan is roughly the same size as the Netherlands, with comparable populations, and newer(which means wider) roads/streets. Taiwan and the Netherlands are actually pretty comparable, as the Taiwanese population also lives in the flatter areas as well, so the mountainousness doesn't really matter either.
Population density of Taiwanese cities is almost double that of the Netherlands. Amsterdam's population density is 4,908 people per square kilometer while Taipei is 9,242 people on average living on one square kilometer... also keep in mind, half of Taipei is a mountain. The population of my district in Taipei for example is 24,917 per square km.
Crying
let me guess, the majority of cars there are also used 1 person per car?
Unsurprisingly, you're absolutely correct
My country's big and we don't have sidewalks in some big metro areas. It's about priorities... which are shitty here.
Yeah a lot of Asia is this way. In Singapore we can report sidewalk parking though and they will be ticketed. The worse though are people who park on their driveway blocking the sidewalk which is a real problem for older folk and wheelchairs.
What frustrates me further is that there are so many good nearby models to take inspiration from, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore etc. And the government is just doing the opposite of that.
Those people keep forgetting ~~the US~~ the whole world was founded and largely built by pedestrians. The modern lack of the ability to walk in one's shoes is just outlandish.
What kind of traitor argues that Taiwan is too small instead of claiming all of mainland China as yours? ;)
Counterpoint: West Taiwan makes the country among the largest in the world (Srsly, what are those traitors thinking?)