The Hindu Business Line : The bumpy road to Beijing Olympics

Endless rows of black sedans, crawling expressways and clogged inner-city routes... these are common sights in Beijing. Despite the State discouraging private ownership of vehicles, city life is disrupted due to intermittent traffic jams. On weekends, particularly, there is virtual chaos because city workers are all moving to the suburbs for a quick getaway and you can be stuck on the roads for hours on end.

The pressure on the civic administration and town planners is mounting, especially in view of the impending 2008 Olympics. Of course, there is little doubt that they will succeed in implementing their carefully crafted plans. A case in point is the way cyclists, who were not so long ago an inseparable part of the Chinese cityscape, have been relegated to a side lane. Yet, with more than 8 million cycles on Beijing roads alone, the task of either eliminating them or, alternately, allowing them more cycling space, is going to be an onerous one.

Given the similarities with Indian metros, there are lessons for us, too. The Beijing Traffic Management Bureau receives 400-500 calls reporting traffic jams daily. More than 90 per cent of the roads are filled to capacity during rush hour every morning and evening. The absence of easy links between bus routes, subways and cars add to the bottlenecks.

The Beijing road and transport department has spent hours with town planners, squeezing in spaces and cutting swathes through old neighbourhoods to accommodate new roads. The sixth ring road was an outcome of these deliberations. Think tanks are deliberating on initiatives that can make an immediate difference, including the Beijing Intelligent Transport System (ITS) Project approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Experts from Sydney and Atlanta, former Olympic venues, have been invited to share their experience as host nations and give suggestions for traffic management during the games.

The central government allocated 560 million yuan ($68 million) for national ITS research with Beijing as the pilot city. Earlier steps to unclog city routes included the construction of three ring roads. City maps were drawn up and residents educated on the shortest possible routes using the ring roads. But China's rapidly growing middle class went one step ahead and acquired cars, which remain a status symbol in erstwhile Mao land.

City streets once dominated by bicycles and buses are now jammed with passenger vehicles. The number of privately owned cars in Beijing doubled in four years to a staggering 700,000. One in every 17 of Beijing's 12 million inhabitants owns a car, and another 3 million hold a driving licence and are saving up to buy the car of their dreams.

In 2003, to meet burgeoning demand, Chinese factories upped the manufacture of motor vehicles by 38 per cent (3.25 million), with passenger cars jumping 55 per cent to touch 1.09 million vehicles. Jiang Xiaojuan, an industry analyst at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, thinks the 10-million mark will be crossed by 2010, pitching China as the world's biggest car market by 2019 with 30 million sales a year.

The level of interest can be gauged from the growing number of visitors flocking Beijing's sprawling auto market near its Asian Games village. The cars on display range from the tiny City Baby, manufactured by Suzuki in Xi'an and priced at 40,000 renminbi ($8,000), to fully imported luxury models like the BMW 745LI at 1.4 million renminbi (before tax).

Three to four BMW cars are bought each month, mostly by members of the nouve rich Chinese and Taiwanese business community.

Meanwhile, for the car manufacturers it is undoubtedly boom time. Most vehicles are made by European, Japanese, Korean and American makers with 50-50 joint ventures in China, and a few struggling independent Chinese makers. They enjoy big tariff protection (38.2 per cent on most imported cars), but this has fallen sharply from 70 per cent in 2001 and is expected to fall further to 25 per cent by mid-2005, as China conforms to WTO norms.

The driving etiquette appears to be simple: concede nothing and take what space you can. Lane changing is a matter of nudging in before the driver behind wakes up and tries to cut you out. Assuming that no one will give way, cars from side-roads charge into main roads to force a back down.

Traffic experts have suggested a five-point action plan, including higher parking fees in public places, more so because Beijing charges much less than its sister cities of Shanghai, Guangzhou and Weifang. Additional parallel roads have been planned to create a more efficient traffic network. The suggestion to scale back on taxis would be more difficult to implement. There are an estimated 67,000 government-owned taxis plying on Beijing roads and half of these run empty most times. The municipal government's attempt to provide an affordable and reliable solution to commuter needs has, in retrospect, only added to the traffic burden.

The solution ultimately appears to lie in a well-managed public transit system. According to the communication commission, city authorities intend to pump more money into the public transit system. Moreover, the development of new city centres in places like Yizhuang, Tongzhou, Shunyi and Changping is expected to ease the traffic flow in downtown areas.

Currently, downtown is crowded with three business centres and one financial centre, in addition to 400 government organisations and institutions. Where China scores over India is not in planning but in the implementation. Construction projects have shorter gestation periods and the efforts of town planners, traffic experts, and related State departments and residents are synergised to ensure that targets are met.

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