Officials hope the charges will encourage use of public transport to ease traffic jams and reduce pollution
(China GDP slowdown, Beijing traffic, rush hour in central Beijing. Photograph: Jason Lee/Reuters)
Beijing,China -Reuters/Guardian.co.uk -2 September 2011: -- Beijing plans to impose congestion fees on cars using certain roads and to encourage residents to buy alternative-energy cars to ease chronic traffic jams and cut pollution... The Chinese capital has already taken several measures to reduce traffic pressure since the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, when it began to order some vehicles off the streets on certain days depending on the licence plate numbers... That policy has not had much effect on gridlock, which has continued to deteriorate... Beijing in January began capping new car registrations at 20,000 per month, available through a lottery. But that has only slowed the pace of increased congestion, while angering tens of thousands of hopeful car owners left unable to buy a vehicle... China overtook the Unites States in 2009 as the world's largest auto market. The rapid growth of car ownership has caused traffic nightmares in major Chinese cities, with Beijing expected to have 7 million vehicles on the road by 2012...
* Report: There are now 1 billion cars on the road. The global car population only stands to grow
New York,NY,USA -The Infrastructurist, by Eric Jaffe -August 24, 2011: -- A year ago yesterday an unfortunate line of drivers in China spent their ninth straight day stuck in traffic. If the country keeps adding cars to its roads the way it did in 2010, that type of congestion might seem light... According to the auto industry researcher Ward’s, the global car population topped the 1 billion mark in 2010 — with a 27.5 percent surge in vehicle registration in China leading the way. China added nearly 17 million cars last year; it now has roughly 78 million in all and has passed Japan for the world’s No. 2 car population. China accounted for nearly half of the entire global increase of 35.6 million vehicles — the second-largest annual spike in volume ever recorded... China was far from the only country to fill its roads. India experienced the second-highest percentile growth, 8.9 percent, pushing the country past 20 million cars in operation. Brazil added 2.5 million vehicles, second most to China in volume. While registration in the United States didn’t even rise a full percentage point, America’s car total still far outpaces the pack, with a vehicle population near 240 million. U.S. cities may be reaching peak car capacity... The International Transport Forum estimates a global vehicle fleet of 2.5 billion come 2050. And the Washington Post points out, than a global car population of 2.5 billion would mean a massive increase in oil production — much of it unconventional oil that’s “significantly dirtier, from a CO2 perspective, than the traditional stuff”... Of course these estimates might be tempered by a boost in electric and hybrid models. The gas guzzlers versus plug-ins argument might be beside the point. Another billion cars on the world’s roads will crush the environment just based on emissions from auto production and infrastructure construction... But by 2050, if market trends continue, ”we could conceivably have 2 billion or even 2.5 billion cars.” Accommodating those cars will entail building new roads and new factories and spending vast amounts of energy to make shipments. All those activities will create enormous emissions on their own. So even with giant strides in clean-vehicle technology, just doubling the number of vehicles could increase the overall environmental effect by a factor of three... To say nothing of the impact on traffic...Labels: traffic jams, transport policies
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