Cycling has become one of the greenest alternatives to cars and scooters in Taiwan. The Los Angeles Times on Monday highlighted Taiwan’s Giant Bicycles, the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer. It credits Giant with changing Taiwan’s transportation culture.
In recent years, the Taiwanese have embraced cycling culture as never before. Giant CEO Tony Lo said in the past 10 years, Taiwan has turned from a biking desert into a biking island.
That kind of transformation is an inspiration to Los Angeles, which is famous for its traffic and smog. Lo said, “If Taiwan can do this under not very favorable conditions, there’s no place where it cannot happen.”
Lo said the number of motorcycles and scooters in Taiwan is declining. The popularity of cycling has enabled Giant to launch a hotel that caters to cyclists and a public bike rental system with more than 5,000 bicycles. The government has invested in public bike systems for its major cities and paved over 4,000 kilometers of bike paths throughout the island, showing other global cities that cycling is truly a viable green mode of transport.