Shanghai Street

TV Asahi is back with more sensational reports about dangerous streets in Japan! This time they went to a shopping street in front of Gotanno Station on the Tobu Isesaki Line. The street has earned the nickname “Shanghai Street” because it is so full of bicyclists who blatantly ignore traffic rules:

The poor ATV reporter attempts to flag down a few of the worst offenders, but they won’t stop for him! Eventually he gives up trying to interview bicyclists, and instead interviews residents and pedestrians who are fed up with the situation. Some of them want a police box build right along the road, but the police have so far only responded with occasional patrols.

7 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - November 9, 2007 at 7:58 pm

Categories: Japanese TV Tags: bicycles, japan, traffic safety, TV

The Overthinker

Easy solution: tell the cops that most of those cyclists are potentially illegal aliens, and watch the place swarm with the boys in blue.
Wataru Tenga

In this age of climate change and past-peak oil, the real solution is to make cities more hospitable to bicycles and pedestrians, rather than car-centric as they tend to be today. The reason bicycles are considered a nuisance is that there is no place for them to exist. I consider cars, especially those that are driven by private individuals for no reason other than laziness or pleasure, to be a far greater problem than bicycles.

D-san

I Agree (because i don’t have a car).
The Overthinker

Japanese cities are actually quite hospitable to cyclists: you can ride on the pavements and there are no helmet laws and you can more or less park where you like. Most cities are fairly flat too. Plus central Tokyo etc are already pretty car-unfriendly as it is.

Wataru Tenga

If you want to see a really bicycle-friendly place, go to Amsterdam, Copenhagen, or Portland, Ore. Tokyo should have dedicated, wide bicycle lanes everywhere and plenty of free parking for bicycles, rather than making the bikes compete with cars or pedestrians.

The Overthinker

I’m not saying Tokyo is a world ideal or anything, but it (Japan in general) is better than other areas.

And ironically, Chinese cities often have cycle lanes running alongside the main roads, so in that respect are better than Japanese cities.

andoroido

The “dangerous” behaviour of the cyclists in the video didn’t seem particularly bad, but typical of ANY narrow street near a train station. Looks like this is just another chance to make fun of China, or shift the problem from a Japan to China by association (doesn’t make sense to me either, but it’ll work for most Japanese)

The CARS are the problem. The narrow streets are the problem.

I guess the producers of TV shows (especially rich NHK execs) are car drivers, thus view bicycles as a pest?

Shanghai Street

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