Department of Transportation

Following the continuous completion of Taipei City’s MRT network in recent years, an integrated public transit service network combining public buses has taken shape. More and more citizens go on foot or by bike to the station to use public transportation. As such, bike riding has become a part of citizens’ commuting lifestyle. In order to construct a good bike riding environment, the Taipei City Traffic Engineering Office completed its review at the end of August 2013 on the opening of the sidewalks wider than 4 meters for both walking and biking; Taipei City’s bike-pedestrian roads will be expanded to 284.69 km in total.
As for the issue of the safety of opening bike riding on sidewalks, a concern of city councilors, after investigation, it was found that the ratio of Taipei City citizens using bikes for commuting or schooling rose from 4.2% in 2011 to 5.5% in 2012. In order to create a better bike riding environment, the Traffic Engineering Office already finished its review at the end of August 2013 on the opening of sidewalks wider than 4 meters for both bikers and pedestrians. As such, the sidewalks for both biking and walking have been painted with bike-pedestrian joint use and pedestrian first markings at both ends of the sidewalks, whereas the notice has also been posted to notify bikers to yield the road to pedestrians on the sidewalk. 175.69 km of bike-pedestrian sidewalks have been added, which has extended the total length of the City’s bike-pedestrian sidewalks to 284.69 km. In the future, the Office will continue to review the sidewalks with a width between 2 and 4 meters, one by one, to examine the feasibility of their opening for bike-pedestrian joint use.
On the other hand, for the posting of the regulations concerning bike riding on sidewalks, in addition to using the bike-pedestrian road sign and putting “pedestrian first” on the markings, the Office has also put more effort into persuading citizens not to ride bikes into arcades. While bikers shall yield the way to pedestrians on sidewalks, bikers and pedestrians shall respect each other, and bikers shall softly say “sorry”, “excuse me” or politely ring the bell before slowly passing pedestrians from the left side, and say thank you to pedestrians. In so doing, we may cultivate a pedestrian-friendly culture, and build a new bike culture, while maintaining pedestrian and biking safety.

2014-03-03