Driving In Taipei
There are two things that really stand out about traffic in Taipei:
1. Although lanes are painted on the road, they are strictly suggestions. Cars weave in and out of lanes at will, no signaling required. See an opening? Just go for it. Need to stradle the lanes to avoid the merging traffic and onslaught of pedestrians? No problem. Need to fit a few cars in a lane? Sure, why not? People seem to expect this sort of driving, so you don’t really see people getting mad about it. Between all the pedestrians, buses, and scooters (see next point) its any wonder why there are not more accidents. As if things weren’t confusing enough, several of the main streets have been turned into one way streets, so they look bi-directional, but they are not. Some of the concrete dividers made sense when the streets went both ways, but now its a real adventure to watch cars weave from one side of the street to the other in between breaks in the dividers.
2. Scooters are just about damned near everywhere. With the traffic (and parking) situation and need for cheap transportation, they make perfect sense. There are probably just as many scooters as there are cars and they even have special spots marked out for them to stop at intersections (see picture above). This way, they can queue right in front of all the cars at red lights. With the recent opening of Taipei’s first elevated train system, there does seem to be fewer scooters and motorcycles than I can remember from the last time I was here 8 years ago.