Traffic Policy in Beijing, China
Beijing, the capital of China, is a biggest city in China. Due to fast development of Economic, more and more Chinese young people want to work in China and have their own house in Beijing , in China, we call these young people ”Adrift in Beijing”, because they think there are more opportunities in Beijing than other cities in China. Therefore, Beijing now suffers from massive traffic congestion. Traffic jam can often happen more than one hour per day when the rush hour. In 2009, the net increase of vehicles reached 515,000 in Beijing; this is a very huge number. How to solve traffic problem is a biggest challenge to Beijing city government.
If you have already been to Beijing, Beijing’s subway system must be giving you a deep impression, in Beijing, we have 16 subway lines. And in Beijing, you can see elevated anywhere. These Transportation systems are all the ways to reduce traffic congestion. Beside these, Beijing city government also establish some other policies to solve traffic problem in Beijing, I will introduce these policies in the next several parts.
In Beijing, Beijing city government uses many polies to try to solve traffic problem, but among these policies, I will introduce the main two plans to reduce traffic volume
NO 1. Odd-even license plate system during workdays (From Monday to Friday)
Odd-even license plate system will be rotated every 13 weeks within 5th ring road in Beijing (in Beijing, areas outside 6th ring road is the suburbs). It looks like a direct way to reduce traffic volume in Beijing, but it is not. Beijing city government imposes this system to reduce the number of cars every day, for example:(From 2013.1.16 to 2013.4.10)
- Every Monday, if your tail number is 0 and 5, you can’t drive your car;
- Every Tuesday, if your tail number is 1 and 6, you can’t drive your car;
- Every Wednesday, if your tail number is 2 and 7, you can’t drive your car;
- Every Thursday, if your tail number is 3 and 8 , you can’t drive your car;
- Every Friday, if your tail number is 4 and 9, you can’t drive your car;
- Every weekend, everyone can drive car. [1]
After this policy, at first, Beijing’s traffic volume is reduced, after a while, many rich people in Beijing choose to buy a second car to make sure they can drive car every day. Nowadays, although this policy still has a positive effect, if most people in Beijing choose to buy a second car, obviously, traffic situation will become more serious than before. In other hand, rich people can drive their cars every day through buying a second car, but poor people not only face a bad traffic problem, but also can’t drive their cars every day. Therefore, in my opinion, this is not a very useful way to solve traffic congestion problem, this policy just can alleviate traffic problem in a short run.
No 2. License quota system
How to reduce traffic volume in Beijing is a biggest problem that Beijing city government should be solved. Except the odd-even license plate system, there is another important system we should to know, it’s called license quota system. Beijing city government tries to use license quota system to reduce car sales in Beijing, if you buy a car and can’t get a license, you can’t drive your new car outside, and this is a direct way to reduce car quantity in Beijing area. “Ernst & Young estimates license quota restriction likely to reduce 2011 car sales in Beijing by 43% to around 500,000 vehicles – first-time and additional car buyers significantly affected”[2]. From the estimation from Ernst & young, if this system can work successfully, traffic situation will become better.
But in other hand, if this system can work successfully, the quantity of automobile sales will be decreasing than before; this is a bad news for local automobile industry in China. Local automobile industry has many disadvantages in China, for example, the quality problem, gasoline consumption problem, technical problem and so on. Because there is a huge demand for automobile in China, some local automobile companies still can sell their products in China market, but after establish this system, it will be a risk to local automobile industry. More people will choose to buy globe brand to get high quality cars. Therefore, globe brand will get large market share in Beijing automobile market.
There are some other ways in Beijing to reduce traffic volume; solving traffic congestion is a long-time program to meet a desirable result.
References:
- Beijing Traffic Management Website:
http://www.bjjtgl.gov.cn/zhuanti/10weihao/index.html
2. Impact of Beijing’s License Quota System on the Chinese Automotive Industry Paper
http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Auto_Beijing/$FILE/Auto_Beijing.pdf
3. Controlling millions of vehicles Beijing, China’s traffic policy package
[1] http://www.bjjtgl.gov.cn/zhuanti/10weihao/index.html, this resource comes from Beijing Traffic Management Department website.
[2] This sentence comes from” Impact Of Beijing’s License Quota System On the Chinese Automotive Industry” Paper, page 1, in short-term impact. http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Auto_Beijing/$FILE/Auto_Beijing.pdf