That's pretty depressing to think about... The day that china completely outlaws bikes is the day that i give up on this country...
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That's pretty depressing to think about... The day that china completely outlaws bikes is the day that i give up on this country...
Why are motorcycles illegal in many cities?
The mayor of the city drives either a BMW 760Li or a Buick Park Avenue, damn he loves that car, but he's always stuck in traffic and he isn't elected. Got it?
Zibo is getting it's own race track! But the plan is it be 'strictly for cars only' in a sort of car theme park. :eek2: Lame.
http://i.imgur.com/lJwvs.jpg
This is in a small town called XingAn, 60km north-east of Guilin. The toktoks and motorcycles are buzzing around like ants. I can understand why motorcycles are banned. It's really difficult to police that many bikes and general driving education is really hopeless, so a ban is the only solution, or is it?
You put these motorbike and tuktuk drivers in cars, do their skills and respect for law improve?
I think traffic police finds it easier to control cars than motorcycles. Traffic signs, marked roads, camera's.. make police's job alot easier. Not saying that I like the one size fits all approach to the problem, but that's just what's happening.
Only a few years ago kunming used to be full of bicycles. Now it's becoming another city choked with car fumes.
That's China. Make an absolute law. The reality is there is no way to selectively govern the people. Laws in China have to be extreme. Imagine just 0.1% of the population not following the laws. It would be chaos (which it already is). Chinese people are "resourceful". If there is a loophole, they will find it. I can understand it, but I don't like it. I wouldn't expect anymore from a largely amoral, atheistic society that has it's cultural shaped by decades of poverty, strife, and social upheaval. It's survival of the fittest and the traffic reflects it.
I see hope though. Some people are starting to queue in lines. Stay on the right side of an escalator. Wait for other people to exit the subway train before entering... When most people start doing this, maybe we will see traffic getting more orderly, and motorcycles being allowed again...
strong words, i agree, but i learned something from that other point of view!
You wrote "just 0.1% of the population not following the laws" - that might be more than 1 million people, i guess most of them are living in Wuhan ;-)
My personally hope is, with more money they will have, with more "fun" they want have, to warm to ride big bikes
In the meantime, I aim to be semi-legal. As a poster pointed out about the Shanghai situation, it costs big bucks to legally register a bike downtown. An unregistered bike isn't legal, but having a legal motorcycle drivers license is better than nothing if pulled over by a cop. As well, I've had gas station attendants say they can still fill up the bike if I produce my drivers license even if there are no plates on the bike.
The ban in Guangzhou is unique in the sense that the downtown area is effectively an island (large river delta) and requires bridges / tunnels to access it. So it is easy to enforce a full-scale motorcycle ban because they're not allowed on the bridges. The police have cameras, etc. and there are limited access points to the bridges. Shenzhen is similar in that most of the roads are also expressway-style and it is easy for the police to enforce the no bike rule, simply by parking at the on-ramps in their police cruisers or watching from the cameras.
To a certain extent, it works like this in Shanghai with the elevated roads and bridges leading into Pudong. You never bikes going across the Lupu Bridge, all the elevated roads, or the various tunnels across the river. For that reason, Pudong is effectively cut off from bikes unless you use a ferry which is rather inconvenient. If I'm going to Pudong, for example, I just take the subway and only use the bike on the Puxi side.
On the other hand, the surface roads within the downtown core are filled with two-wheeled traffic. So long as you stay off the elevated roads and bridges, I don't see how this could change much in the future.