Although
most residents of Taiwan probably didn’t notice, last Saturday was World Car
Free Day, intended to demonstrate that life is not only possible without cars,
but better. Many cities celebrate by
banning cars from downtown streets or providing public transit discounts. New Taipei had another idea however: making
it easier for people to drive to an MRT station.
Specifically,
the New Taipei Department of Transportation announced that one of their new
measures to encourage “green transit” will be increasing car parking space near
Dingxi MRT station. For those who don’t
know, Dingxi is one of only two rail stations in Yonghe district, which has
230,000 residents and 40,000 people per km2, the highest population density of
any district or city in Taiwan, and is therefore singularly ill-suited to cars. Dingxi is unsurprisingly one of the most
heavily trafficked stations in the Taipei MRT, ranking 14th out of
89 stations in 2011 and averaging over 26,000 riders a day. As anyone who has passed through Dingxi can
attest, the crowds of people using the station walk there or take a bus, and
what’s really needed is more sidewalk space to relieve the pedestrian gridlock
on Yonghe Road. Increasing space for
driving will only encourage people to drive more and make walking more
inconvenient- in other words will undermine the very goals of World Car Free
Day- and regardless will only benefit a small fraction of the people who use
Dingxi station.
New Taipei’s
other new measures for World Car Free Day are less ridiculous and more
banal. Aside from Dingxi, the Department
of Transportation chose two other rail stations- Danshui and Jingtong, in
Pingxi- to be “green stations”. Improvements
planned include better pedestrian signage at Danshui and more bicycle “space”
at Dingxi (no idea if that means lanes or parking space). Another “improvement” is more plantings at
all three stations, certainly a nice touch but of dubious environmental value.
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