Op-Ed Contributors

Time to fix traffic in Beijing

By Liu Zhi (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-12-21 08:05

In response to the growing level of traffic, many mega-cities and large cities in China opted to widen existing streets and build more roads for cars, sometimes by demolishing roadside trees and bicycle lanes and squeezing pedestrian space. They all tried to avoid upsetting the car-owning group by not using non-pricing or pricing controls on vehicle ownership and use, unless there was no alternative.

As a result, car users get the hidden subsidies because much of the urban transport investment and available capacity benefits them. They don't know it, though. Now they have become a much bigger group and are badly spoiled. Hyper congestion seems to be the natural revenge.

Seoul, the capital of the Republic of Korea (ROK), has gone through a similar problem. The city reached hyper-congestion level in the mid-1990s, just a few years after the ROK exported its cars to the West. This happened despite the presence of city's wide boulevards.

To alleviate traffic congestion, Seoul first opted to subway development and tried to avoid any direct action to reduce road congestion and car use. Very soon, the Seoul government faced increasing subsidies for the subways and deteriorating quality of bus services. The newly added road infrastructure was quickly filled with new users.

Then the government was forced by the situation to introduce a network of dedicated bus lanes and the peak-hour congestion pricing to the two key tunnels through the central area of Seoul. In 1997 the government went on to increase gasoline taxes and road user charges. It also raised parking fees at public parking facilities almost every year, and reduced the required number of parking spaces in the new commercial and office buildings in the city center.

With these came the most dramatic action in 2003 when the current ROK President Lee Myung-bak was the mayor of Seoul. The city demolished a 6-kilometer elevated highway built above the Cheonggyecheon River, restored the previously covered river, and built a Bus Rapid Transit line along the corridor. The only comparable action in China is probably Shanghai's turning the Nanjing Road into a pedestrian shopping street.

Today, Seoul's traffic congestion problem is not yet over. But the situation is well under control, thanks to its world class public transport system and numerous on-going measures to control car use and promote safe walking and bicycling.

I recall a quotation from the transport profession in the West: No one would sit in congestion forever.

Travelers who get caught in congestion would try to find a way to escape if there are other options. Those who sit in traffic and complain aloud are right if they don't have an alternative. The job of the city government is to provide the alternative - better buses, safer bicycling, easier access to subways.

The non-pricing and pricing controls of vehicle ownership and use in congested cities are just the means to correct the long-standing policy distortions, and create the right incentive for car users to shift to other modes of transport. It is time for Beijing's car-owning group to understand this. It is time for Beijing to adopt demand-side controls.

The author is lead infrastructure specialist of the World Bank Office, Beijing

(China Daily 12/21/2010 page9)