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Sunday, October 30, 2016
Fail
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!
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4 comments:
You're just mad because your butt lacks the required agility.
Love the cycling path fail photo. I've found several spectacular fails in and around Taichung City proper, including a brand new cycling path that ends at a 10-foot high concrete wall, an old one that takes you down a dead-end street, and another brand new section that was so uneven and rutted they closed it - a month after it was constructed. There's an entertaining coffee table book in the making here...if only I'd taken pics.
About bike paths running smack into barriers (stairs, raised curbs, things like that): a while ago I asked a Taiwanese friend about this, wondering why the designers are not embarrassed by this obviously bad design. My friend replied with a smile that the designers clearly do not think that individual cyclists are fools--cyclists should be able to figure things out!
My take-away from this anecdote is that until folks here actually feel ashamed (on the designer side) or outraged (on the user side) about such idiocy, shoddy design will continue to be business-as-usual.
Guy
What needs to be remembered is how projects like this work. No development or infrastructure projects are done top-down. Basically, some entrepreneur comes up with a scheme for some public works and sells that to someone in the administration on the strength of how popular it might make them and how much money can be squeezed into their pocket if funding can be obtained. The actual functioning or usefulness or cost-effectiveness of the project is never part of the equation. Important people make money, and the public gets told something like, "We made you a bike path, be grateful".
Hence our network of green-painted parking lots for used-car dealers, random double-parking zones, I'm-in-a-hurry-so-I'm-pretending-my-Benz-is-a-bicycle lane and so on... See also, wheelchair / disabled access nothing with wheels or canes could use, simple road bridges with millions in decorative junk tacked onto them, BRT etc. etc.
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