No Car Day – Met with success, and failure.
September 22nd marked ‘No Car Day’ in China, Chinese called it 无车节 (wu che jie)
Around 100 cities around China took up the central governments idea of having a car free day, citizens were encouraged to take public transport, bicycles or walk to their intended destination rather than take their automobile. Chinas pollution levels are very high and the Beijing is eager to knock down these levels of pollution to something reasonable, however, Chinas rapid break neck growth which saw millions of factories spring up and the peoples pockets bulge with cash that is largely being spent on automobiles has only added to the levels of pollution. Twenty years ago everyone had a bicycle or took the bus, buying car for yourself was illegal, only companies could buy a car, truck or bus, fast forward twenty years and in ’07 car sales grew by an average of 20% month on month.
Reporters in Beijing noted that traffic levels remained the same (large and congested) but other places in China, i.e. Qingdao saw many roads empty except for taxis and public buses. Friends of China Car Times told us that the main road through the city center (Hong Kong middle road) was empty, and press photos in the local newspaper (Qingdao News) showed an empty Zhongshan road (pictured, top left, this is a major shopping district)
Did China Car Times partake in No Car Day? Of course we didn’t, we drove all the way to the airport and back in an automatic shift car, the air conditioning on and the windows down, if we smoked we would have smoked 300 cigarettes on the way but we dont, so we settled for some methane release instead. What about China Car Times readers, did you take part? Did any you hippies folks take public transport or *gasp* walk anywhere in China this weekend?
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Sorry Ash, They must have forgot to tell people about this in Shanghai. It was just the same old same old in Pudong. I expect it was just as chaotic in Puxi like it is every Saturday.
There seems to be really nice considerate people living in QingDao these days. Except you Ash!
Yep, I am ashamed of myself
But still, I cant ride my bicycle to the airport with two people on the back plus luggage
I heard the inner city roads were empty, but as I live away from the city center Im unsure, traffic remained the same.
Does the government expect everyone to stay at home on one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year, or do they want everyone to take public transport?
‘But still, I cant ride my bicycle to the airport with two people on the back plus luggage’
-sure u can! u just haven’t tried hard enough…LOL
That is true. Im nothing compared to my Chinese friends who can ride bicycles with TVs/refrigerators/doors and I even once saw a pool table on the back.
Next time!
The only people that I know who participated in this thing were my wife and kids. They rode their bikes to school that day (a little too far to do every day) and saw NO difference in traffic flow from a normal day.
On the Sunday when there was supposed to be NO traffic on my road, there was NO DIFFERENCE in the traffic on my road.
Was it enforced in other cities. It wasn’t here where I live.
Why was I the only one to be afraid to break the rules?