Return of the Bicycle Kingdom? How pavement cycling is transforming Taipei

Taiwan's capital - notorious for elevated highways and swarms of scooters - is in the early stages of a cycle revolution powered by legalised sidewalk cycling and a bike-share scheme where more than half of users are women

A swarm of scooters forms at the head of a queue of traffic waiting for the lights to change. Visors down, engines revving, they jockey for position ahead of the cars, trucks and buses on a specially marked patch of tarmac reserved for cyclists in many parts of the world.

The buzz rises to a high-pitched crescendo and, as the lights turn green, they shoot off. A minute later the lights change and the process begins again. Taipei is home to almost one million scooters - as well as 2.7 million people. Like many other large Asian cities, the roads here are seen as no place for cyclists.