Message Understood?: Outgoing Cabinet Poll Shows Wide Support for Bike Policy

In what appears to be an attempt to bolster the deeply tarnished reputation of outgoing president Ma Ying-jeou, a cabinet level survey has revealed a previously unobserved groundswell of public satisfaction with a large swath of Ma administration policies to give the outgoing president a veneer of vindication. The new numbers serve as the final revelation to the ignorance Ma cited leading to the failure of many key policies, including cross-strait relations, economics, tourism, and transportation.

The Straits Times:

ST: And yet, voters delivered a stunning indictment of you, your policies and the KMT (Kuomintang) on Jan 16. What do you think led to such a state of affairs? I know you blame it on communications failure, you’ve said: “Actually there are many good policies that the public don’t understand because we haven’t communicated them enough.” Is that all there is? Do you feel you’ve been misunderstood?

... or (link)

"Ma's policies have painted him as for the one percent and China, at a time when society at large is fed up with both," said Jonathan Sullivan, associate professor at the University of Nottingham's School of Contemporary Chinese Studies in Britain. 

"Adding to these policy outcomes is Ma's personal reputation for aloofness, indecisiveness -- but paradoxically with an authoritarian streak -- incompetence and inability to balance the interests of his party, Taiwan and his own personal objectives," added Sullivan.  

Even staunch KMT supporters have turned their backs, with the party in tatters having lost its majority in parliament for the first time under Ma. 

"We had high hopes, but we saw our faith in him fading away," said Sun Chieh-yi, 59, a retired watch shop owner who comes from a traditionally pro-KMT family.
"People do not feel their lives are any better than before." 

The China Post reports:

The survey also found that about 70 percent of the respondents said they are satisfied with the results of the completion of the Hualien Taitung electric rail system, the Wugu-Yangmei Overpass on a section of National Freeway No. 1 in Northern Taiwan, and the addition of three stops on the High Speed Rail system.  

Policies that received wide support include the expansion of bicycle paths around the country, and the distribution of subsidies for childcare and free tuition for children under the age of 5, at 69.8 percent and 65.2 percent, respectively, the results show.

Let me remind the reader of what this bicycle policy is, in case you missed it. The central government, with a budget of NT1.2 billion (USD 36.4 million dollars), posted a series of brown sign posts along Taiwan's more heavily trafficked highways and maybe installed a few shower areas (not sure exactly where). This is a system that serves leisure tourism interests to better enable periodic long distance cycling trips between major cities. Unfortunately, these paths hardly do justice to Taiwan's beautiful cycling roads, and serve to be more about keeping cyclists close to businesses and transportation. Much of the main route covers the gritty Highway 1, with little more done than sign to tell riders that they are on the Route No. 1. Few, if any, real changes have been made to the route to make it less of a slog through an eyesore. Moreover, the designated cycling routes do nothing to address pollution or traffic congestion.

Of course, the landslide victory for the DPP to ring in the new year was mostly a referendum on the policies of Ma Ying-jiu, whose popularity struggled to cling to double digits for the remainder of his term. Moreover, an economic policy that saw the economy enter contraction as opposed to the salad days of Chen Shui-bian, who ruined the economy with a growth rate averaging 3.8 percent growth between 2000 and 2008, with two years averaging six percent. Ma tried to replace outsourced jobs with jobs in the service industry and in a heavy emphasis on tourism, which has been a net failure for Taiwan.

As far as cycling opportunities outside of tourism, European companies are looking to source less from Asian OEMs and do more of the assembly in Europe to take advantage of the EU. Monday night the editor-in-chief of Bike Europe held a presentation on cutting lead times and the shift to producing final products in the world's most lucrative bicycle market. Currently, The Netherlands is Europe's largest producer of bicycles, followed by Germany and Belgium a distant third. Still, most bicycles are still sourced from Taiwan.

Also:

• Giant is expecting another flat year with Q1 profits dipping 1.4%, full warehouses in the US and the China market imploding. The Ebike in Europe is the only thing keeping the world's largest bike maker from a more rapid decline. The bike maker aims to "innovate" their way to profits.

• The Sports conglomerate, Dorel Sports, the umbrella company representing Cannondale, Schwinn, GT, Mongoose, Caloi, IronHorse, Sugoi, Fabric and Charge, saw a 5% drop in profits for the first quarter.  

• Seven Cycles profits rise 8% in shit market. 

Pedal Pumpers Push Pedestrians: A Clash of Cultures in a Conflicted Kingdom

Religious Zealots in Traffic
The Taipei Times ran an editorial from the Taipei based reporter, James Baron, who brings into focus some of the problems Taipei is facing with its overlapping bicycle policies.

Baron writes: 

The effort to turn Taipei into a cycle city has borne fruit. 

The Guardian ran a piece called “Return of the Bicycle Kingdom? How pavement cycling is transforming Taipei” on Tuesday last week that focuses on the initiatives that have shot bicycle usage figures for the city way past those of New York and London. The author of the article, Nick Mead, who was in town for this year’s Velo-city Global Conference, heaped deserved praise on the YouBike system and the riverside cycling paths. 

He also referenced a threefold increase in cycle lanes within three years, though the caveat that this extra space would be on the sidewalk and, thus, taken from pedestrians was telling. Another interesting figure was the 386.24km of sidewalk that is now apparently open in its entirety to cyclists.

I also wrote some about this article Here and Here. But I don't get up to Taipei enough to see the daily interaction between bicycles, motor vehicles and pedestrians. The Guardian article seemed a bit fanciful, and not the Taipei I have encountered. But I gave the writer the benefit of the doubt is writing honestly about his experiences. I also imagined that maybe it is worse off where he hails from, making Taipei look like a city park. 

One paragraph that struck me about the article was this gem:

“We want to be a cycle-friendly city, but we’re not trying to be like Amsterdam or Copenhagen,” Anne Chung, transport commissioner for Taipei, tells me on the sidelines of the VeloCity global cycling conference, which is taking place in Asia for the first time. “There are too many scooters and motorbikes at the moment and it is too dangerous to ride on the road with them, so the pavement is safer for cyclists. We want people to make cycling part of their lives and be able to combine cycling with the metro and buses for the ‘last mile’ of their journeys. We want to be able to tell car and motorbike users that there is a smarter way to get around.”

But upon further investigation Baron uncovered a different story. This struck me as a bit strange, considering the occasions public officials have sought to tour the Netherlands and Copenhagen looking for inspiration for Taiwan's future development.

Possibly, one of the biggest problems may be in how the central and local governments have not been able to decide where cycling belongs. It becomes and ideological problem. Digging way back in the TiC archives I found this piece that really captures the root of the problem.

"Although the MOTC is moving to take the lead for national biking policy, projects to develop local bike paths continue to be financed by the Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency (CPA) and the Cabinet-level Sports Affairs Council (SAC). According to a construction plan by the SAC, a budget of NT$4 billion (US$125 million) will be devoted to the development of an integrated network of biking paths around Taiwan from 2009 to 2012, continuing similar efforts started by the council in the early 2000s for sport and recreational purposes." 

You can see by the alphabet soup above, how bureaucratic divisions, budget rivalries and lack of cross-agency communication can impede the process of integrating cycling into the transportation grid. To expand on the paragraph above, it is obvious that cycling in Taiwanese officialdom is neither transportation nor a sport.

The bicycle has no place to go, because bureaucrats have not been able to envision where to put it. Many see the bicycle as a piece of leisure sporting equipment-- a cash generating toy-- that is fun for non-cyclists to play with on weekend jaunts past cafes, kitsch markets, souvenir shops, and restaurants. Others see the bicycle as transportation and integral to reducing congestion in the cities. 

By relegating the bicycle to the sidewalk, the city is sending the message that the bicycle is not regarded as transportation.This is a policy and an outlook that needs to be reversed for Taipei and other cities to really begin making progress. They need to provide road space for bikes and treat the bicycle as an important cog in the transportation grid rather than a mere toy.