On the Transfer and Implementation of Bicycle Commuting Policies in Taipei
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Hung, Wei-chieh
Abstract
Public concerns about biking in Taiwan have gradually shifted from a focus on leisure biking to urban commuting in recent years. The role of bicycle has been at the
center of a policy debate since the idea of bicycle commuting was introduced to the local transportation policy reform. This study examines how different groups of policy actors advocating urban transportation policy reform problematized Taipei’s transportation system, and what they have done to change it. Specifically, I focus on how bicycle commuting policies from other countries or cities were being introduced and transferred in this process as references or solutions to Taipei’s transportation problems by government planners and NGOs.
Local government planners have started to promote bicycle commuting policies since 1997. It has, however, developed into a series of leisure biking activities right before the Taipei Mayoral Election both because of the sensitive timing, and the fact that public have not yet considered biking as a commuting alternative. This series of leisure biking activities indirectly contributed to the 2007 leisure biking boom. The increasing public concerns about environmental issues in 2007, and the increase of leisure biking around 2007 provided government planners with a new opportunity to promote bicycle commuting. While government planners focused on planning and promoting new bicycle commuting policies, NGOs advocating bicycle commuting have also introduced relevant policies and discourses from other countries and cities in an attempt to propose a series of concrete reforms to achieve an ideal transportation system. However, due to the limited authority that local administration has and the limited national-level reforms that could be done (because of a large difference in transportation system of Taipei and that of other counties), local government planners could only choose to reconstruct the allocation of urban space. The most prominent reform is the construction of inner-city bicycle lanes. The policy production process
of Taipei’s inner-city bicycle lanes demonstrates the limitation of transferring and adopting bicycle policies from other “successful models” due to the unique vehicle composition of transportation system and the unique political climate in Taipei.
The bicycle commuting policies implemented in 2008 was not a big success. These policies seek to change urban residences’ daily habits, and challenged the demand and supply of existing transportation structure, thus, brought about massive critiques from the public. Local government planners, again, shifted their original policies under the political pressure of 2009 Taipei Mayoral Election. They did not, however, drop the whole plan of constructing the inner-city bike lane system. Instead, they made minor adjustments to the original urban space without alarming the public of these changes.
The production process demonstrates the importance of local specificity discussed in the policy transfer literature. Though policies from other cities may not contribute much to the concrete details of the actual policy implemented, they are very often used as discourses to legitimatize the positions that each social groups hold. The unsatisfying result of Taipei’s bicycle commuting policy may be a result of confusing the subject group that the policy was aiming at: the minority group that was already using bicycles or the majority group that were not using bicycles but could be potentially motivated to change their commuting methods.
Subjects
bicycle
Taipei
policy transfer
urban governance
Type
thesis
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