Taiwan’s capital – notorious for elevated highways and swarms of scooters – is in the early stages of a cycle revolution powered by legalised sidewalk cycling and a bike-share scheme where more than half of users are women

A swarm of scooters forms at the head of a queue of traffic waiting for the lights to change. Visors down, engines revving, they jockey for position ahead of the cars, trucks and buses on a specially marked patch of tarmac reserved for cyclists in many parts of the world.

The buzz rises to a high-pitched crescendo and, as the lights turn green, they shoot off. A minute later the lights change and the process begins again. Taipei is home to almost one million scooters – as well as 2.7 million people. Like many other large Asian cities, the roads here are seen as no place for cyclists.

But in the capital of Taiwan – an island once known as “the Bicycle Kingdom” – the authorities have taken the unusual step of legalising cycling on 240 miles of city centre pavement. Taipei is also tripling its network of cycle lanes to cover 120 miles over the next three years – although these too are strips of painted sidewalk taken from pedestrians.

Strange as it may seem, it works. Riding on the pavement feels 100% safe – for cyclists at least – and many of the riders are women, pedalling along at a leisurely pace and with hardly a helmet in sight. Picking your way through the city-centre pedestrians during rush hour may be pretty impossible, but in general the numbers are encouraging: whereas six or seven years ago few cyclists were to be seen in the city, now around 5% of journeys are taken by bike. That’s around double the cycle modal share of London, for example, and four-times that of New York.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Taipei before cars, scooters and multi-level highways. Photograph: Taipics.com

YouBike has changed the image of the city. It’s one of the city government’s most popular policies King Liu

“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.”

The YouBike cycle share system, a public-private partnership between manufacturer Giant and the city authorities, plays a key role. Since its launch in 2009, the YouBike network has grown to 7,000 bikes at more than 200 locations, most of them strategically placed next to metro stations and bus stops. Each bike is used an average of 8.6 times a day – the highest turnover rate in the world – and by 2018 the system will have grown to almost double its present size.

The transformation of Taipei: Fuxing Road - before and after Fuxing Road before and after: a lane was taken from cars and a segregated cycle lane built on the widened pavement

At the same time, Taipei has announced plans to more than triple the length of its network of segregated city centre bike lanes to 120 miles by 2019. In addition, there are 240 miles of shared use pavements, and 70 miles of riverside cycleways outside the city’s flood defence levees, which are hugely popular with leisure cyclists at weekends.

Combined with the implementation of on-street parking fees for cars and scooters, the approach seems to be working – a survey showed an estimated 31.2% of people riding YouBikes had switched from motorbikes and 4.4% from private cars.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Many YouBike riders are women … and few wear helmets

Taiwan earned its Bicycle Kingdom monicker in the 1980s, when the island’s factories turned out more bikes than any other country in the world and the ‘Made in Taiwan’ label was ubiquitous. Facing increased competition from mainland China in the late 90s, Taiwanese bike manufacturers responded by ceding the low-cost end of the market, and concentrating on higher-spec machines. Giant and Merida have grown to become two of the world’s biggest bike companies, and international firms such as Specialized, Trek and Colnago have manufacturing sites on the island.

Recently, this interest in high-end bikes has found expression in the huge popularity of cycle tours of the island. Taipei’s mayor, Ko Wen-je, completed a 325-mile route last month, topping a previous 235-mile excursion. Giant’s president and founder, King Liu, has completed the full island circuit twice – the first time at the age of 73, and the second at 80 – cutting his time from 15 days to 12.

Liu, now 82, calls his colourful, sturdy YouBikes the “last piece of puzzle” in Taipei’s transformation. “It seemed impossible to introduce bike share with so many motorbikes and scooters,” he recalls. “At the start the media, the public and politicians all disagreed with the vision of bike share. Motorbikes had dedicated lanes, but not cyclists. The rights of cyclists were not being taken care of well by the government. It took tense negotiations, but it passed in the end.



“In the past you wouldn’t see many people cycling in Taipei – but now, with YouBike, it has changed participation and the image of the city. It has become one of the city government’s most popular policies.”

Nick Mead (@nickvanmead) You can take your bike into the public toilet with you in Taipei. Great idea #vc2016 pic.twitter.com/MPQKo8Qitf

I hire a YouBike – a simple matter of touching the dock with a smart card, valid for the metro and buses too – and head off on a cycling tour of the city with Phil Tai, president of the Formosa Lohas Cycling Association.



We want to be a cycle-friendly city, but we’re not trying to be like Amsterdam or Copenhagen Anne Chung

As we whizz along the riverside – the first area of the capital to see any cycle infrastructure – we pass a constant stream of cyclists of all shapes and sizes, on everything from YouBikes to top-of-the-range carbon, muddy mountain bikes to brushed-steel fixies – all making the most of a sunny day, the cycle-friendly toilets and the 70 miles of traffic-free tarmac on the outer side of the city’s flood defence system.

Back inside the levee walls we negotiate the roads under a series of elevated highways – some double, some triple-deckers – and dive into the narrow streets of Wanhua, one of the city’s oldest districts. Shared pavements here often run through the tight gap between lines of parked scooters and busy shop doorways. We stick to the road.

Heading into the modern central business district and towards Taipei 101 – the world’s tallest skyscraper until it was usurped by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai – we encounter proper protected cycle ways. When major thoroughfares such as Xinyi and Fuxing were remodelled with new underground metro lines, the city authorities took the chance to grab a lane of traffic from cars and widen the pavement. A slice of that sidewalk was then painted as a cycle lane.

Viva la revolución: Mexico City cyclists fight for the right to ride in safety Read more

The segregated lanes disappear into shared pavements at major junctions and metro stations, and what with all those rush-hour pedestrians, there’s potential for conflict – but in a few days cycling around the city, I didn’t see any. Even the car drivers pushing through pedestrian crossings on red were generally cautious and polite.

Charles Lin, deputy mayor of Taipei and a professor in urban planning, sees cycling as part of his strategy to make the city more liveable and sustainable by 2050.

“People have always said that form follows function, but the way I see it, form follows mobility,” he says. “Mobility decides the image of the city – how we are perceived by visitors – and the way we move determines the way we live in the city. From now on, neighbourhoods will develop wherever the bicycles go, and the cycling-oriented network will lead city-wide development. We are, piece by piece, moving towards a more people-oriented city, even though it costs and even though it is hard.”

“We are making progress,” adds Chung. “If you come back in three years you’ll see a big change in Taipei.”

Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook and join the discussion