In 2008 Taipei City’s Department of Transportation launched the Taipei Bike Sharing Pilot Program , which evolved into the highly successful YouBike , a bicycle rental project with over 30 million users as of October of this year. I welcome the use of bikes as a cheaper and eco-friendly alternative to scooters and cars. However, I think that the YouBike so far has had a negative impact on Taipei. There are three major problems that need to be addressed: 1) the government has failed to make the population aware of the risks of riding their bikes on sidewalks; 2) as the city lacks an extensive network of bicycle paths, pedestrians now have to share the same, often narrow spaces with a growing number of bikes; 3) YouBike riders are not required by law to purchase an insurance, like scooter and car drivers do. As you can see from the video below, some cyclists (in my experience, the great majority of them) have absolutely no sense of responsibility when riding their ...