"It was a beautiful day," said Fan. "Even though we didn't ride very fast, it was very relaxing." Upon completing the nine-kilometer trek, cyclists were greeted at the park by public buses waiting to take them back to City Hall, where the surrounding roads beneath the shadow of Taipei 101 would remain closed for the rest of the day. Food vendors and merchants selling trinkets lined the sidewalks under blue and white striped tents, while giant inflatable playpens invited children to scamper about amid the seldom carless boulevards.
"Can I ride on the street?" Eric, 10, asked his father hesitantly once the family had returned to the city.
"Go right ahead," Fan replied as he enjoyed a skewer of fried fish balls with a cool glass of wintermelon tea. This year was Fan's first taste of World Carfree Day, although Taipei has been an official participant since 2004. After hearing about the event on the local news, Fan decided to see what all the commotion was about.
In addition to Taiwan, World Carfree Day--established in 2000 by the World Carfree Network, a non-profit organization based in the Czech Republic--was celebrated this year "in 1,500 cities in 40 countries with carfree festivals, bicycle demonstrations, street closures, and permanent changes to make cities more environmentally and socially sustainable," according to the organization's press release.
The World Carfree Network, originally called Carbusters, was founded in 1997 at the first Towards Carfree Cities conference held in Lyon, France. Carbusters eventually evolved into Carbusters Magazine, while WCN transformed into an informational and organizing network.
The idea behind the network, according to Randall Ghent, WCN co-founder and membership and conference coordinator, was "to create stronger links between organizations working to improve conditions for walking, cycling and public transport." In addition to World Carfree Day, held every year in September, the organization also coordinates projects such as the Carfree Green Pages, which provides a database of over 500 groups that support alternative transport; the Ecotopia Biketour, a summer cycling tour across Europe held every year since 1990; and the aforementioned Carbusters Magazine, published quarterly.
According to the network's Web site, the number of cars in the world has increased nine-fold since 1950, from 70 million to 630 million. This trend shows no signs of slowing: WCN estimates that "by the year 2025, there will be well over 1 billion motor vehicles on the world's roads." Cars alone consume 37 million barrels of oil a day and "are responsible for nearly half of our air pollution and at least one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions."
As the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases, so too does global warming edge closer to becoming a reality. The theory of global warming, infers that excess carbon dioxide--the residue of burned fossil fuels--becomes trapped in the Earth's atmosphere where it acts as a blanket to insulate heat and prevent it from escaping, thus having the same effect as a greenhouse. According to the Web site of the United Nations Federation Convention on Climate Change, global temperatures have risen 0.6 degrees Celsius over the past century. The changes are even more pronounced in glacial regions, where by some accounts temperatures have jumped five degrees Celsius in the past 100 years. The UNFCCC's computer climate models estimate that, if current trends persist, the average global temperature may rise 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.
As the Earth's surface temperature grows warmer, it stands to reason that the glaciers in arctic regions will steadily lose mass, releasing water into the oceans and raising the sea level. If this ever happens, it would pose a threat to the many cities and towns located on Taiwan's coastline. In fact, Taipei and Kaohsiung--the two most populous cities in Taiwan--are both situated next to bodies of water: Taipei on the banks of the Danshui River and Kaohsiung along the southern end of the Taiwan Strait.
The UNFCCC, formed in 1994 in an effort to address the issue of climate change, is the driving force behind such measures as the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols, the latter a legally binding agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions formed in 1997 with the consensus of the world's developed nations. Because Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations, it cannot and did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, but nonetheless, of its own accord, initiated a number of "no regret" measures aimed at slowing the effects of global warming.
Air pollution has been and continues to be one of Taiwan's most pressing concerns. Despite covering only about 34,000 square kilometers--less than 0.1 percent--of the world's total land mass, Taiwan is nonetheless one of the most densely populated places on the planet and accounts for approximately 20 million, or 3 percent, of the world's vehicles. According to Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration, as recently as 1999, the island contributed 0.9 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, ranking 23rd among all developed nations.
"Ten years ago, we had maybe 12 million cars, which included eight million motorcycles and four million personal cars," said Yang Chea-yuan, director general of the EPA's Department of Air Quality Protection and Noise Control. "Now, there are 12 million motorcycles alone."
According to Yang, even though Taiwan claims "the most stringent emissions standards in the world," scooters continue to pose huge problems to the air quality of Taiwan. "On Saturdays or Sundays, when I take a walk with my family, there is always one motorcycle that has to go by, and then we have to go home," Yang complained. "The smell, it fills the alleys." There are two main types of scooters in Taiwan: those with four-stroke engines and those with two-stroke engines. The two-stroke bikes are the worst, emitting the blackest, grimiest smoke that contains the most greenhouse gases. It is precisely these two-stroke scooters that Yang and his department consider "a very serious problem."
The issue, however, lies in the ubiquity of scooter use. "In a city like Taipei, people have good incomes, and they can invest on the public transportation system," he explained. "But in rural areas, like Pingtung, the local government doesn't have the budget to maintain buses. So maybe buses show up every four or five hours. If people need to go to the hospital, they don't know when it will come. So they use motorcycles."
In 1995, the EPA began implementing an air pollution control fee and testing scooter emissions at random checkpoints. Scooter owners are now required to show that their vehicles meet emissions standards set by the EPA or face a fine of about US$100. Since the implementation of the APC fee, air pollution levels in southern Taiwan--the island's most polluted region, and a place where scooters are the norm--have shown a dramatic decline. Though the levels are still more than double that of the northern parts of Taiwan, the long awaited MRT system in Kaohsiung, which City Hall estimates will open for passengers by the end of the year, should bring further improvements to air quality in the south.
"If we want to encourage people not to take passenger cars or motorcycles, the government must give support and invest to establish the infrastructure for public transportation," said Yang. Future improvements in Taipei include expanding MRT lines and eliminating the older diesel buses still used in the city. Yang also hopes people will start investing in hybrid cars, motorcycles and electric bikes.
Unfortunately, for people like Fan and his family, hybrid and electric cars are still too expensive, and "there is no way for bikes to be a transportation tool," according to Angela, Fan's wife. In the city, the MRT runs quickly and frequently, but this is not the case in the rest of Taipei County. Furthermore, the overcrowded roads have little patience for people on bicycles. "Hopefully in the future, we can use bikes to go to work and the kids can ride them to school," said Angela, "but right now we just use them for exercise."
In Taipei City, conditions on the roads are no different. Motorcycles constantly speed past cars and weave between buses, often riding down one-way streets in the opposite direction; cars and buses similarly pay no heed to lane designations or right-of-way, which is precisely why an event like World Carfree Day is such a treat.
"Usually the cars come first, and then the people," remarked Fan. But on World Carfree Day, "the people came first on the big roads," for a change.