Reducing the Pain of Living in Beijing

[M II A II R II K]

China Transportation Briefing: How to Save China’s Capital?


March 12, 2012

By Heshuang Zeng

Read More: http://thecityfix.com/blog/china-transportation-briefing-how-to-save-china%E2%80%99s-capital/

In February 2012, the number of cars in Beijing exceeded 5 million. Given the problematic levels of traffic congestion and air pollution in the Chinese capital, few people hailed the milestone as an “achievement.” Car ownership rose to this level 11 months later than originally predicted, thanks to a city policy that issues license plates based on a monthly lottery system. Traffic conditions in Beijing have been sending residents constant surprises by becoming even worse than thought to be “the worst.” According to IBM’s Commuter Pain Study, Beijing topped the list for the most painful commute in the world. Frequent gridlocks are turning Beijing’s modern ring roads into a vast open parking garage. The average time Beijing-ers spend on commuting is 43 minutes—the longest among Chinese cities. Accompanying the pain of commuting is the pain of breathing polluted air, which anyone living in the city cannot avoid.

- The Beijing government is—or at least seems to be—taking progressive actions to address congestion and air pollution. At the institutional level, the Beijing municipal government lists curbing fine particle pollution as its top priority for 2012, ahead of housing, health and education. Facing great public pressure, the government began measuring PM 2.5 on January 21, right before the Chinese New Year (previously, there were only readings from the U.S. Embassy.) The city vows to slash PM 2.5 pollution by nearly 30 percent by 2020. While making information transparent is a great first step, the government needs to take more aggressive measures. Other than the license plate lottery system, Beijing has traffic restrictions on private vehicles, based on the last digit number of license plates, which keeps one-fifth of its vehicles off the road on weekdays. To show its resolution to battle air pollution, the Beijing government would also reduce the usage of official vehicles, very likely through forcing official vehicles to comply with the restriction. The number-based traffic restriction, started after the Olympics, has just been renewed again. It will continue to be valid through this year.

- It seems that the Beijing government is taking almost every possible measure to make people drive less and emit less pollutants to save the Chinese capital. But with automobile sales as a key driver for the Chinese economy, it is unlikely that the government will take aggressive nation-wide actions against it or its related industries. For example, it quietly shelved national diesel emission standards in February, which is believed to be related to the economic interests of national petrol companies. EV cars, which the Chinese government invests heavily, might be a solution, yet there is still doubt about whether EV cars in China are really “clean.” A recent study shows that EVs might be more harmful than gasoline-based vehicles, since coal is so widely used for power generation in China. Air quality seems to be a bit better after the launch of PM 2.5 monitoring, though hazy days haunt the city occasionally. Fuel prices are skyrocketing, but hundreds of thousands of people in Beijing are persistently trying their luck in the monthly car license plate lottery, hoping to legally own a private car and drive on the already congested streets. Meanwhile, rapid metro construction is moving quickly. The Beijing government has put huge efforts on upgrading public transit and promoting non-motorized modes, which could be a right direction to go.

.....




http://thecityfix.com/files/2012/03/beijing-traffic.jpg

[emathias]

China Transportation Briefing: How to Save China’s Capital?

...

I'm sure it's changed, but when I was in China in 2005 Beijing was my least-favorite city because it was overall very, very anti-pedestrian, particularly in the newest parts. Really wide, fast roads. Long blocks between crossings. Buildings set back far from the street. It was like a taking a modern American sprawl suburb and increasing the density ten-fold or even twenty-fold - of course people are going to drive if they can. Plus many of their new popular movies revolve around aspirational characters with cars - whether that's culture reflecting reality or what I don't know, but taken together I'm not at all surprised that traffic in Beijing is terrible and likely to get worse for the foreseeable future. The newer parts of Shanghai are only marginally better. I mean in Chicago and New York, the tallest buildings take up entire blocks and are often set back further than most buildings, but the blocks are still normal sized, and the buildings mostly still interact with the street in a human-scaled manner. The Jin Mao building in Shanghai has surface parking on the east side of it for crying out loud, and the block it's on is really large. It's built expecting most people to approach it by car, period. Many of the other new supertall buildings in Shanghai are built the same way. I don't know who's teaching them urban design, but the teacher's doing a terrible job. The trouble is both cities have excellent urban examples in the older sections. Shanghai's French Concession is laid out similarly to a small French city and is very pedestrian-friendly. Beijing has always been at least somewhat imperial with their roads and layout, but the hutongs, while at times too crowded and dangerously narrow, are also very pedestrian-friendly and could have been adapted to a more modern mix of cars and pedestrians without completely destroying them.