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By Wayne Chang
It’s been almost two months since Taiwan lifted its entry restrictions and ended necessary quarantine, permitting most worldwide vacationers to go to the island.
The federal government has since vowed to spice up its tourism choices and appeal to 10 million worldwide guests by 2025 after shedding out on vacationer income amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
However in an effort to lure and retain worldwide vacationers, critics say Taiwan should first enhance its highway security — for drivers and pedestrians alike.
The island could also be famend for its delicacies, pure surroundings and hospitality — however it is usually infamous for its harmful roads. A number of international locations, together with Australia, Canada, Japan and the US, have particularly referred to as out Taiwan’s highway circumstances.
“Be alert for the numerous scooters and bikes that weave out and in of site visitors…Train warning when crossing streets as a result of many drivers don’t respect the pedestrian’s proper of manner,” the US State Department warns.
The Canadian authorities is more blunt: “Bikes and scooter drivers don’t respect site visitors legal guidelines. They’re extraordinarily reckless.”
Hazard on the highway
A Fb web page that has lately gone viral in Taiwan pulls no punches in its title: “Taiwan is a living hell for pedestrians.” Based in December 2021, the web page has almost 13,000 followers a 12 months later.
Returning to his native Taiwan after a stint residing in Melbourne, Australia, Ray Yang, the web page’s founder, mentioned the reverse cultural shock of “almost getting run over” by motorists prompted him to start out the web page.
“Cities in Taiwan share a significant challenge — a scarcity of pavements and constant walkways for pedestrians,” Yang advised CNN Journey.
In accordance with authorities statistics, 42% of roads in city areas have sidewalks. However that doesn’t inform the entire story. The roads may be slender, stuffed with parked scooters and vehicles, blocked by lamp posts and transformer bins, and occupied retailer fronts with crops or signboards. Pedestrians are then typically “pressured” to stroll onto automobile lanes, Yang mentioned.
Furthermore, some pedestrian pavements are a patchwork of patios — recognized in Taiwan as qilou — constructed from totally different surfaces and heights, adversely impacting their walkability.
Dad and mom with infants and small youngsters generally have to hold the strollers by hand as they make their manner via, whereas wheelchair customers are pressured to zigzag out and in of automobile lanes and the walkways that are at occasions obstructed.
Pedestrians typically must struggle for his or her proper of manner with cyclists and motorcar drivers as they cross the highway or stroll on pavements, Yang added.
“In Taiwan, there’s a frequent saying that the attribute friendliness of Taiwanese individuals vanishes as quickly as they get behind the steering wheel,” says Professor Cheng Tsu-Jui of Taiwan’s Nationwide Cheng Kung College.
In accordance with the numbers
Final 12 months, 2,962 individuals misplaced their lives to site visitors incidents in Taiwan, which interprets to 12.67 deaths per 100,000 people.
That’s roughly six occasions larger than Japan and 5 occasions larger than the UK.
Native Taiwanese media have coined the time period “site visitors struggle” to explain the island’s “battlefield-like” site visitors circumstances and excessive variety of highway fatalities.
Taiwan’s roads being unfriendly to pedestrians is a by-product of a bigger drawback, in keeping with Charles Lin, the manager vp of Taiwan Site visitors Security Affiliation, an advocacy group that has been campaigning for safer roads.
The crux of Taiwan’s highway questions of safety, he says, primarily lies within the lack of up to date highway engineering and design experience, highway design pointers which can be “unclear” and solely “exist on paper” as they’re “selectively carried out,” and a “car-centered” planning that prioritizes personal automobiles over public transportation, cyclists and pedestrians.
As Taiwan started modernizing its roads within the Sixties, it referenced highway design pointers from the US, which largely prioritized vehicles over individuals. Nonetheless, as different international locations started to include the wants of susceptible customers — particularly pedestrians and cyclists — into their highway designs, Taiwan fell behind.
It additionally doesn’t assist that in Taiwan, a myriad of presidency businesses have jurisdiction over the development and administration of roads complicate division of tasks and bogs down efforts to push for change.
Along with security issues and the absence of pedestrian-friendly walkways, Taiwan’s lack of public transportation and will additionally restrict the event of tourism past the most important hubs on the island.
“Public transportation may be appalling outdoors of the Better Taipei metropolitan space — even non-existent in some rural areas,” says Cheng. “It isn’t on the degree of turn-up-and-go.”
The way to repair it
For years, the Taiwanese authorities has been conscious of the island’s highway questions of safety, and has tried to deal with it primarily via public campaigns on fastening seatbelts and sporting helmets, plus crackdowns on drunk driving.
It has additionally issued handbooks on the newest highway design greatest practices and has established makeshift sidewalks, in addition to improved highway designs in some areas.
However consultants have mentioned the federal government’s “typical” response has been resorting to extra policing and including on extra site visitors lights and pace cameras — even in places the place “it doesn’t make sense” to put in them — “piecemeal” methods that aren’t essentially efficient, in keeping with Lin.
“We depend on enforcement an excessive amount of,” says Lin. “The main target must be on designing higher highway infrastructure and enhancing drivers’ training.”
Huang Yun-Gui, the manager secretary of Taiwan’s Nationwide Highway Site visitors Security Fee, advised CNN Journey that “there may be rather more work to do in bettering Taiwan’s highway security, and the federal government is working in direction of the last word aim of zero highway fatalities.”
The-CNN-Wire
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Scooter site visitors in Taipei photograph through Getty Pictures
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