Car-free initiatives have become trendy in cities worldwide trying to sensitize the population to the environmental damage caused by motorized vehicles. Taipei, like many other major cities, participated in that initiative, doing so for the first time in 2008.This year’s month-long series of activities will begin on Monday, with a festival and various promotions encouraging use of public transportation touted by the city government. However, in announcing the activities today, the authorities said that to avoid inconveniencing the public during the car-free day on Monday, the department of transportation would … not close roads to traffic, meaning that car-free day will be anything but car free.
Undeniably, car-free days in busy metropolises is always inconvenient, but isn’t that the whole point? Without hassle, without inconvenience, we simply go on with our highly polluting and highly destructive lives, unaware that this very insouciance is taking our fragile habitat closer to extinction, one particle per million of carbon dioxide at a time.
Short-lived inconvenience now, if it serves to educate us about the impact of our rapacious behavior, is far more desirable than the (likely permanent) inconvenience that awaits us years hence when we’ve passed the tipping point.
Voluntary gestures are sufficient to educate.
ReplyDeleteTaipei is one of the most densely populated metropolitan areas in the world. On the whole, its residents are far from naive about the relationship between motor vehicles and deteriorating air quality.
Making the gesture voluntary also avoids the public safety hazard inherent in forcing swollen passenger counts onto public transit system that has experienced serious problems in the last year handling normal traffic.
A lot is about education of the public and this needs to come from higher up. If people feel embarrassed about polluting the environment where others live, they won't do it. We need more smart initiatives.
ReplyDeleteIsn't the problem really far more basic in that there is a lack of an effective legal infrastructure in which such externalities can be resolved? Of course this is true of just about every modern city in the world, not merely Taipei.
ReplyDeleteYet the traffic in Taipei itself and all of its associated dangers and inconveniences, rather than just the pollution it produces, is a major reason why I have always lived in the south.
"Yet the traffic in Taipei itself and all of its associated dangers and inconveniences, rather than just the pollution it produces, is a major reason why I have always lived in the south."
ReplyDeleteWhere the utter disregard for ANY of the road-rules is much more likely to end your life than it is in Taipei where people will stop at a pedestrian crossing at least 60% of the time. :)
Steve - I don't know about you, but I am not, and never will be, such a willing abstainer from personal responsibility that traffic laws could be the only thing standing between me and certain death on the roads.
ReplyDeleteI say the overemphasis on rote observance of traffic laws at the expense of situational awareness and thinking before acting is a significant aspect of the problem.
I can't say I disagree with any of that.
ReplyDeleteTo avoid taking this blog entry further off-topic, I've posted on your blog in response to the latest topic (which seemed highly relevant).